THE EYESORE former council office building at Weymouth’s North Quay is costing taxpayers more than £102,000 a year to stand derelict – but a bid to use it for temporary community use has been ruled out due to it falling into an unsafe state.

A consultation will now take place in the new year about the future use of the landmark site, it has been confirmed.

Councillor Tony Ferrari has admitted that the building is in a poor state and could not be visited in safety.

Cllr Ferrari, who is overseeing the sale or re-use of assets now owned by Dorset Council, has also confirmed that the building is costing local council taxpayers more than £102,000 a year to remain empty.

Plans for housing on the site came to a halt in September 2019 when the council’s area planning committee rejected an application to redevelop from Dorchester-based Magna Housing Association.

The proposal would have involved a cost of around £3m to demolish the building and clear the site.

A commercial developer, who has offered to take on the site and re-develop it with high quality flats and some shopping, has since said that his approach to the council to take on the building had been rejected.

The latest proposals to make use of the site have come from the #WeymouthTogether network of community organisations.

A spokesman for the group, Penny Quilter, this week asked the council if it could take a look at the building to assess whether it could be put to short-term community use.

But she was told by Cllr Ferrari that the current state of the building meant that it was in no state to be used, even short-term, or even visited to inspect it.

In his response he said the council intended to ‘engage with the community’ in early 2021 about the future of North Quay.

He said the cost of maintain the building is currently £102,636 a year – made up of £95,760 in business rates, £2,555 for security costs, £474 for repairs and maintenance and £3,847 in utility bills.

The offices closed in June 2017 when the last employees left the site.

In September last year, two members of Dorset Council's planning committee voted in favour of knocking down the rundown building.

But the decision was overturned in favour of re-using the current four-storey building, which was opened in June 1971 by Princess Anne.

At the time, several councillors said that the authority had signed up to climate emergency measures and should act according to those principles.

Meanwhile, there was also concern that the estimated £3million cost of the demolition and levelling the site for use as a car park would come out of the public purse – and fears that the harbourside land might remain as a car park for several years.