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© Paul Zanre
New seat of justice
When civil servants from different West Lothian agencies needing new premises started talking, they found out that specifying a shared building could meet all their needs better - and the public's, too. Michael Willoughby takes a tour
B
etween the turn of 1800s and the Second World War, nearly every largish settlement in the UK built its own town hall, starting off in the classical style, moving
through to gothic in the 1840s followed by a re-revival of the classical in the Beaux Arts style of the 1880s. This handed over to Deco after the First World War. But as the apparatus of local government grew following the
adoption of William Beveridge’s proposals for a welfare state through 1946, municipal functions outgrew their town halls and council workers in separate functions such as social servic- es, justice, transport and education found themselves working in some of the least desirable buildings on the local authority’s estate in the name of economy. Indeed, some of the great civic buildings were sold off and, as the privatisation of public serv- ices developed during the Thatcher era, few new examples were built. But did this atomised approach really save money? And are
the functions ever so separate? West Lothian Council, 30 miles east of Glasgow, was given an opportunity to ask these questions in 2003. It was approached by the Scottish Courts Service seeking a Livingston site to replace their cramped Linlithgow quarters. (Livingston, a new town, is the centre of the area, which has a fast-growing population.) Meanwhile, local councillors were looking for a new site to
replace their crumbling HQ, West Lothian House, which would need significant investment. At the same time, the police were outgrowing their offices in Livingston. Under the Council’s steam (they owned the land) an exer-
cise was carried out to establish whether a decent business case could be made for a new, large, joint building, prior to appointing consultants. Having decided it could, a design team was appointed by the
Council who had committed to work with their partners to raise the required £42m construction cost (excluding fees and
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