By Joe Locker, Local Democracy Reporter
Nottingham City Council has delayed the opening of the new Sherwood Library to ‘summer’ 2025.
The opening of the new library in Spondon Street has already been delayed beyond a planned summer opening this year while work is done to remedy more than 130 defects.
It was hoped the new facility would be open to the public by the end of the year, however in an update on Friday (December 6) a council spokesman told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS): “The library service [is] now working towards an opening date of summer 2025 for Sherwood Library.”
The defects had included problems with the living wall, fire safety and a significant leak in the building’s atrium.
Back in September Cllr Sam Lux (Lab), the council’s executive member for leisure and culture, said she hoped the problems would be rectified in under a month.
But in October, the authority admitted some problems were still persisting.
Campaigner Des Conway branded the handling of the Sherwood Library project as the “nightmare on Spondon Street”.
“It is shocking,” he said.
“I’m very disappointed. The council has gone back on their promise. It means we’ve not had a library for four years and that’s totally unacceptable.”
Back in 2017 the old library was deemed not fit for purpose due to its poor state of repair, and a consultation was held to find out what people wanted from the new facility.
By 2020 a plan was drawn up to demolish it and rebuild the library with added commercial space and housing.
Nottingham City Council sold the site to local developer Hockley Developments, with an agreement that the library would be built at no capital cost to the authority, and that a 125-year lease would be agreed at a nominal rent.
While Sainsbury’s is now open in the commercial space, the library’s doors have remain closed due to the problems.
Earlier this year the Local Democracy Reporting Service reported how work on the library had been hampered after the scheme’s previous contractor, Dako Construction, collapsed into administration.
While a new contractor was soon found and the library building was handed back to the council at the end of 2023 for the final fit-out, a planned summer opening was missed when the defects were discovered.
During a Communities and Environment Scrutiny Committee meeting on Wednesday (December 4) Cllr AJ Matsiko, who represents the Sherwood ward alongside two other councillors, also criticised the handling of the situation.
Hockley Developments told the LDRS the council’s new opening date was in contradiction to what the firm had been told.
In a statement the developer said: “We cannot control when tenants move into any property – but our understanding is their interior designers aim to start their works in January.”
