Dartford council to go ahead with £10 million works to rebuild parts of The Orchard Theatre

A council has decided to “press ahead” with works to redesign and rebuild large sections of a theatre, which require an additional £10 million in funding.

The Orchard Theatre in Dartford has been shut since September 2023 when it was found to have reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) in its roof.

By December, the council had built Orchard West, a temporary replacement structure where events could be hosted.

However, that project ended up costing £2.6 million – exceeding the original planned cost of £1.5m.

The roof on the original theatre has since been repaired and solar panels have been fitted however, in November, Dartford council and the venue’s operator Trafalgar Entertainment said they also had to upgrade the building’s fire safety systems to meet new rules following the Grenfell fire.

It was then discovered “significant further works” are required to meet modern regulations and current health and safety operating standards.

At a cabinet meeting yesterday (February 20), the council decided it would be going ahead with the further works.

Council leader Jeremy Kite (Con) said: “We’re pressing ahead and will complete the work on The Orchard Theatre.

“We are going to do a lot of work on the cost pressures of it and we’re going to look at getting those costs down.

“I think theatres are very complicated buildings and, frankly, I believe we’re doing the right thing.

“I’ve seen some people saying it would have been cheaper to rebuild but it absolutely wouldn’t – £30 million was the estimate we received for building a new theatre.

“It boils down in the end as to whether or not we want to keep the theatre alive in Dartford and we do.”

The theatre is being given an additional £9.8m to bring the building up to scratch.

Another £1 million is also needed to keep the current temporary theatre going until the refurbished one reopens.

Currently, this is projected to be in May next year.

An additional £500,000 will also be allocated to Trafalgar Entertainments to ensure they can keep putting on events over the next year.

Cllr Kite added: “It can’t be avoided because the work is absolutely essential and if you compare it to other renovations across the country it is in line with the costs of those.

“The numbers are huge and no one is taking them for granted or making a decision lightly but you either have one or you don’t

“It brings people together so I think for us it was a no-brainer, but it doesn’t mean we were complacent about the costs and we’re doing everything we can to bring them down.

“Works are already going on at The Orchard and we’ll be moving on to the next phase as soon as we can”.

Cllr Jonathon Hawkes, leader of the Dartford Labour Group said: “It remains our view that we want to see our theatre reopened as soon as possible. It’s the heart of our town and it helps drive the local economy.

“But now there are some real questions to be asked about the handling of the project, and the confidence that residents can have in the theatre opening by next May.

“We want to support efforts to rebuild the theatre and we’re at a stage now where we have to put the money in, we can’t leave it half built.

“But what’s also the case is that it’s an additional £10million of taxpayers money and there’s nothing we’ve seen saying that this is the final cost.”

A council scrutiny committee meeting will be taking place on Tuesday, March 18.

Cllr Hawkes added: “I think there are questions to be asked about why the initial inspection did not pick up these required works.

“We all started at the point where we all agreed that action needed to be taken to address the problem of RAC on the roof, but we are now in a situation where we’re up to £17million in total which is a huge increase from the original report.”