SWINDON Council is working on costed plans to completely refurbish the exterior of the troubled Mechanics’ Institute in a bid to help find a sustainable use for the icon.

The council hopes the work, estimated at £7m to £10m, will not only save the listed building from falling further into ruin, but also increase the chances of an end user coming forward.

Once officers have completed the plan, they will apply for grants from bodies, including English Heritage.

But even if enough cash is secured, the owner of the building, currently Forefront Estates, would still have to give consent.

Forefront Estates, headed by Mathew Singh, still owes the council £300,000-plus the authority spent on emergency repairs to the building, and the council has started the legal process to recoup another £800,000 for additional urgent work.

Coun Garry Perkins, the cabinet member for regeneration and culture, said separating the issue of the building’s fabric from that of a sustainable use was the way forward.

He said: “It protects the building, it brings it back with a proper roof on, so it becomes the original Mechanics’. The fact the doors are closed that, to me, can be separated out and looked at as phase two of the project.

“Just delaying it at the moment is finding that use for the building and the longer we delay it, time just goes by. We need to do something and this just seems a reasonable suggestion for going forward on the building initially.

“We will have to see what English Heritage say about the proposals but until we have any firm proposals, it’s very difficult for us to discuss or for them to commit to go forward with it.”

Coun Perkins hoped the project would bring forward more potential users, because some of the costs would already have been shouldered by others.

He said: “It would certainly show the commitment of the council and the other people involved in the preservation of the Mechanics’ if we’ve managed to do the first part of the job.”

Dan Rose, the chairman of the Mechanics’ Institution Trust, said: “There needs to be an integrated plan for the building, and that actually the best role that the council can take is to work with the organisation, which is the trust, which has done the most work in terms of preparing a business case for the building and a restoration plan for the building, and working with the trust to make that happen.

“We’ve got to work with these issues as a whole and by splitting it in terms of doing the outside and then the inside isn’t really the best option.”