£5m Lightwoods Park revamp to restart in weeks

Work will resume at Lightwoods House and Park, in Bearwood, on October 12.

Sandwell Council announced the Heritage Lottery Fund has now agreed to transfer the contract to new construction company HB&C.

And the firm has been told it can re-commence work on the project next month.

The council recently announced talks were taking place over the transfer and had hoped work would start again at the end of this month.

But it will instead resume around a fortnight later than expected.

The new company has emerged from a management buy-out of the previous contractor.

Work on the scheme ground to a halt following the collapse of contractor Fairhurst Ward Abbots in June.

Officials said preparations will take place during the week starting October 5 before the actual work resumes on October 12.

Because of the delay, the project is not now expected for completion until September and October next year.

Deputy leader of Sandwell Council, councillor Steve Eling, said: "I think everyone was shocked and concerned when the work was forced to come to halt.

"When a contractor goes into administration it can be a very complicated and lengthy process.

"However everyone has put a great deal of effort to get things going again so I am very pleased there is a now a start date in place for the work to resume.

"That said we have still lost four months on the project.

"We had hoped the work on the children's play area would be completed by the summer but obviously that is not going to happen now."

Councillor Eling said he still expected work on the play area to be one of the first things completed.

"I don't think there was too much left to do on that so I would expect that to be completed fairly soon," he said.

"Although we do not have an exact completion date at the moment there was still around 11 or 12 months of work left when the work was forced to stop.

"It will be good to see work taking place on site even if things will be a little later than expected."

The Lightwoods Friends Group said it had been a 'setback' and they were now looking at a revised timeline for events and activities they were hoping to run at the venue next year.

Under the plans, a tea room is being created and exhibition space provided on the ground floor of the building.

On the first floor, there will be rooms for the community, conferences and weddings with the upper floor dedicated to commercial office space."