The white sheeting around Manchester Town Hall has become a familiar Albert Square sight. The Our Town Hall project, a £430 million refurbishment of the grade-I listed Victorian hall, is of enormous scope. Council-employed teams have to do everything from dirty work like digging new trenches in the basement for pipes, to the ever-so-delicate job of reapplying gold leaf paint to 150-year-old murals.
Once it’s complete, the resplendent Town Hall will retain its original feeling - more cathedral than civic centre - whilst retaining its important civic functions. READ MORE: The 'paradise' spa hotel and luxury lakeside retreat amongnorth west sites awarded inaugural Michelin Keys This will be where baby Mancunians are registered, where we can marry, and where our loved ones will tell society we’ve passed away. But the project has hit problems.
This week, council chiefs announced it’s £76m over-budget and it's now expected to complete in July 2026 and open to the public in early autumn. The original date was 2024. They say delays have been caused by the sheer complexity of the renovation, comparable only to restoring ‘Big Ben and the Elizabeth Tower’.
To see how complex work is, the Manchester Evening News went behind the white sheeting and scaffolding for an in-depth look of the Town Hall. The incredible gold-leaf ceiling in the Great Hall (Image: Jason Roberts /Manchester Evening News) Inside Manchester’s ‘civic cathedral’ The first impression one has stepping i.
