This is who paid the extra £3m it cost to refurbish Preston's Harris Museum

The local authority announced earlier this month that Preston’s premier cultural attraction would be reopening on 28th September – almost four years after it closed for what has turned out to be a £19.2m revamp.

The final cost was 17 percent up on the most recent £16.2m budget set for the project.

The Post understands that Preston City Council stumped up a further £1.41m, while the National Lottery Heritage Fund contributed £1.5m and £62k came from other, unidentified sources.

Details of the authority’s additional contribution have emerged almost 12 months after councillors were told that the burden of covering the rising costs would not fall on local taxpayers.

A meeting of the council’s overview and scrutiny committee in August 2024 heard from deputy chief executive Sarah Threlfall that the ballooning bill was the result of “hyper-inflation” and the cost of materials leaping “enormously over the lifetime of the project”.

The extent of the rise was not made public, but asked by committee chair John Potter about how the shortfall would be bridged, Ms. Threlfall said that “the vast majority is not being met by…taxpayers, because there is external funding being put in place”. The meeting was told that an application had been made to the lottery’s Heritage Fund.

However, the figures now obtained by the Post – showing that a significant cash injection did ultimately come from the council – suggest that either less was received from the lottery funding pot than was required or that costs continued to rise.

A Preston City Council spokesperson said: “The additional costs reflect the programme impact of extending the scope of the project, funded through additional external funding, and the results of the previous fit-out contractor going into administration.

“The council’s [extra] contribution accounts for less than 10 percent of the total project costs, demonstrating value for money in preserving the Grade I-listed building and establishing a cultural hub for Preston and Lancashire.”

It brings the total contributed directly by Preston City Council to more than £3.5m, while Lancashire County Council – which leases 40 percent of the Harris from the city authority to house the largest of Lancashire’s libraries – has put in around £1.4m.

The National Lottery Heritage Fund provided an original £4.5m grant – which was key to enabling the project to go ahead – and £1.9m came from part of Preston’s share of the last government’s Towns Fund.

The overhaul was originally envisioned as a £10.7m scheme back in 2018 to create the country’s first ‘blended’ museum, art gallery and library. But the ambition for the building – which opened in 1893 – was later expanded, leading to pre-planned extra costs.

However, sky-rocketing UK inflation at the height of the delivery phase of the project – peaking at 11.1 percent in October 2022 – unexpectedly pushed the bill up further. By the end of that year, a £2.45m gap had opened up in the budget.

The city and county councils – together with the lottery’s Heritage Fund – all stepped in, with extra contributions of £1.26m, £375k and £250k, respectively.

Along with funding from other sources, it brought the total cost to the £16.2m figure that has itself now been exceeded.

More asbestos – requiring removal – was also discovered during the refurbishment than had previously been expected.

It is hoped that around 500,000 visitors a year will come to the relaunched Harris – an increase of 140,000 on the last pre-pandemic year of 2019.

The reopening will be marked with a special Wallace and Gromit-themed exhibition, entitled “A Case at the Museum”.

HARRIS BILL BREAKDOWN

£10m – originally-conceived scheme, including:

***£4.5m National Lottery Heritage Fund grant;

***£1m Preston City Council;

*** £1m Lancashire County Council;

***various contributions from the Preston, South Ribble and Lancashire City Deal, the Friends of the Harris group and public donations;

£2.1m – additionally-agreed funding up to 2022 from Preston City Council and Lancashire County Council

£1.9m – from Preston’s £20.9m share of the government’s Towns Fund

£1.5m – National Lottery Heritage Fund grant uplift (2024)

£1.41m – additional contribution from Preston City Council (2024/25)

£803K – Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s Museum Estates Development Fund

£585K – Arts Council Capital Investment Programme

£450K – Wolfson Foundation/Garfield Weston Trust

£250K – National Lottery Heritage Fund grant uplift (2022)

£100K – Local trusts and foundations already supporting the project

£62K – additional contribution from unspecified sources (2024/25)

£30K – Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities’ Changing Places Fund

TOTAL: £19.2m

Sources: Preston City Council and Lancashire Post analysis