A new agreement with a developer for the future of Shire Hall is hoped to be reached by summer next year. 

Cambridgeshire County Council plans to start looking for a new company to redevelop its former headquarters in Cambridge after the previous developer pulled out. 

The authority relocated to its new base at New Shire Hall in Alconbury Weald in 2021. 

Negotiations were taking place with the company Brookgate to agree a 34-year lease on the old Shire Hall building, with plans to convert it into a hotel. 

However, earlier this month the county council confirmed that Brookgate had pulled out of the deal. 

The county council is planning to start marketing for a new developer in the New Year, with the hope of completing the legal agreement by summer of 2024. 

At a meeting of the authority’s asset and procurement committee this week (November 28), the leader of the county council, Cllr Lucy Nethsingha (Liberal Democrat), said she had had “significant concerns about the Brookgate deal” and said she was ‘frustrated’ at the situation. 

The deputy leader of the county council, Cllr Elisa Meschini (Labour), said this was ‘not where the authority wanted to be’. 

Cllr Simon Bywater (Conservative) said “clearly” there were lessons to be learnt from the situation.  

He also raised concerns that the deadlines proposed to be set for the new agreement to be reached were “hugely optimistic”. 

Cllr Chris Boden (Conservative) said he had “never been 100 per cent happy” with all of the Brookgate agreement, proposed under the previous Conservative administration, which he said he had raised privately at the time. 

However, he said he “can not help feel failure to push forward at the same pace past the elections may have contributed to the failure” of the agreement. 

He also raised concerns that the deadline of next summer for the legal agreement to be reached was an “unrealistic target”. 

Cllr Nethsingha said getting the deal done had been a priority for the joint administration. 

She also said the authority could have also potentially benefited from having had “tough deadlines” previously. 

Michael Hudson, the executive director for finance and resources at the authority, said the timeline and deadlines proposed were considered feasible under a “certain set of scenarios”. 

He said he would be able to update councillors in March 2024 if the summer deadline was still considered to be possible, and if not, what the reasons for the change were.