Town council will not pay £20,000 for repair of golden clock in Scarborough
Scarhorough Town Council says it won’t be paying the £20,000 repair bill for a gold gilded clock.
Councillors have ruled out paying more than £20,000 for repairs to the Westborough-Newborough clock following a request from the town’s Civic Society.
According to Historic England, the electric clock at 86 Newborough, dates from 1988.
The ownership of the clock is unknown, councillors were told, and North Yorkshire Council was planning on removing it over concerns about a health and safety risk, when Scarborough Civic Society stepped in to try and save it.
A quote for the repair and renovation of the clock from Time Assured Ltd stands “in excess of £20,000”, according to a report, which notes: “The Civic Society has advised they are unable to fund this project and the request is for the town council to consider funding the works in full.”
Cllr David Knowles said: “The beautiful Westborough-Newborough border clock, with the council symbol on it, is in need of refurbishment, but £20,000 seems like an awful lot of money.”
An officer said that North Yorkshire Council does not know who owns the clock, and after the civic society’s intervention, it obtained a quote for the cost of repairing it.
“The quote says ‘the lettering to be sized, fixed and gilded to both sides using 23.5-carat gold leaf,” members heard at a meeting of STC’s community and place committee on Wednesday January 28.
Cllr William Stuart said: “Speaking as a member of the finance committee, we have a budget and we’re not in a position where we can just find £20,000.
“We do have a budget for the transfer of services from North Yorkshire Council to Scarborough Town Council, but we don’t know what those costs are yet because there hasn’t been a dialogue with NYC to know exactly what we are taking on.
“It depends on how much we’re going to spend in other areas, and it’s probably something that we will have more of an idea about in a nine-to-12-month process.
“At that point, we might be able to look at it and say we’ll treat it as a transfer of a service and we’ll take it on board.
“It’s not an outright no, we need to look at the other costs of the transfer from North Yorkshire.”