The £604,000 transformation of Bracknell’s Time Square has been completed.

Upgrade works began on Time Square, which currently serves as Bracknell Forest Council’s offices, last year.

Now, the building has been transformed to provide a café, a ceremony room for weddings and civic events, and rentable space for community groups to meet.

Although its function as the council’s headquarters will continue, the council’s executive committee agreed that it was “vitally important” to upgrade Time Square to serve the community more and make best use of the space within the building.

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When making the decision to begin the £604,000 upgrade, councillor Marc Brunel-Walker, executive member for economic development and regeneration (Conservative, Crown Wood) said: “One of the things that many residents have told me over the last couple of years is the need for enhanced facilities for groups within the community to meet within the town centre.

“I think it’s absolutely vitally important to bring these enhanced facilities into our town centre.

“I commend the work that’s been done in drawing up all of these plans, I think residents when they see them should be amazed by the space that’s being created.

“But more than that it’s about bringing back and enhancing facilities in Time Square.

“Rather than leaving an asset sitting there without use, this is actually enabling us as an authority to take responsible action, and to change the use of Time Square and to enable us to embrace the new world of work that’s here.”

 

At the time, a council officer said that the works could be completed at the end of October last year. However, the projected ended up being completed in November instead.

Announcing completion of the works, Kamay Toor, Assistant Director of Property Services, said: “The construction work to remodel areas of Time Square, including building a new collaboration space on the ground floor with a café, a new ceremony room for weddings and citizenship ceremony’s, a new reception and customer meeting area and a new child conferencing room on the ground floor, were completed during November 2021, within the approved budget agreed by the executive committee during June 2021.”

The council has proposed a further £140,000 to upgrade computing and IT at Time Square, which has been introduced in the council’s £16 million capital budget proposals.

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That would bring the total cost of the upgrades to £744,000.

Assistant director Toor explained: “Now the refurbishment work has been completed, the budget request is for a separate project.

“This will replace old and legacy IT equipment with new hybrid IT at Time Square.

“This will allow full council and other business meetings to be conducted in a hybrid manner, in line with the council’s new ways of working.”

The extra £104,000 upgrades are part of the capital budget proposals which are currently undergoing consultation.

You can give your views about the council’s budget proposals here.

The consultation closes on Tuesday, January 25.