DIDCOT’S Civic Hall is set to have a £1.3m facelift at taxpayers’ expense.

Town councillors voted on Monday to back plans to build a new entrance block fronting on to Broadway and to redesign and improve the building.

They decided to back the most expensive of three options to revitalise the hall presented in a feasibility study drawn up by architects Sutton Griffin.

The design would see a landscaped garden built outside and an extension to the south, housing meeting rooms and toilets and making the hall more visible from the Broadway.

Building work could start as early as next year and last nine to 12 months.

Architect Patrick Griffin said the £1.3m price tag was only ‘a ballpark figure’.

He said: “At this stage there is always going to be a finger in the air, because there is not all the information available.”

Although the town council will seek grants to help pay for the new hall, it is likely to have to get a loan far in excess of the normal £500,000 cap on parish and town council borrowing.

Figures presented to Didcot Town Council’s finance and general purposes committee showed that a £1.33m loan would cost the council £86,079.54 a year for a quarter of a century, putting £10.48 on residents’ annual council tax bills.

Backing the proposal, council leader Bill Service said: “Traditionally, civic halls do not make money. It offers a feelgood factor to the residents of the town.

“The question is whether that feelgood factor and the good things that come out of a civic hall will outweigh and persuade people of the town that we are going to make a decision that is going to put the town council in hock for 25 years.”

Opposition leader Margaret Davies said it would be a ‘false economy’to scale back the plans to a lesser refurbishment.

She said: “We would be creating chaos without getting the quality or the facility that the town deserves.”

The construction of the hall in the late 1970s was also paid for by a 25-year loan taken out by the town council.