A cash-strapped council is to move into a town's tallest building – allowing its current HQ to be potentially turned into social housing.

Ashford Borough Council has voted to leave its current Civic Centre in Tannery Lane in favour of International House next to the town’s railway station.

Bosses say the move will "take place in stages during 2024” and will save about £1.3m per year.

It comes as the authority needs to make savings of about £3 million a year until 2026 to balance its books.

The switch was approved at a full meeting on Thursday, where council leader Cllr Noel Ovenden (Ashford Independents) said its current home would not be “mothballed”.

The Wye representative was responding to Ashford’s Labour leader Cllr Brendan Chilton who raised concerns about the future of the Civic Centre.

Cllr Chilton said: “At the last briefing it was suggested that we could mothball this site and I personally don’t think that is an acceptable position to hold because this is an asset.

“We cannot, as a responsible authority, sit here and let it mothball because it would depreciate in value.

“We would never count in this position where we have to make a decision between protecting a building and cutting services and staff and that is the reason why we will be supporting the move.”

In response, Cllr Ovenden said “there is no intention of mothballing” the Civic Centre, and “we are absolutely pretty sure that we can deliver social housing in this building”.

KentOnline revealed in September how ABC was looking at converting its current HQ, but no timescales have been released.

The authority has owned International House since 2014 and says there is “strong financial rationale” for the move as the Civic Centre requires maintenance works.

But former ABC leader Cllr Paul Bartlett (Con) raised financial concerns over how the redevelopment of the Civic Centre could be integrated with the former Kent Wool Growers (KWG) site, which ABC bought earlier this year.

He said: “One of the things that worries me about all of this is the design and thinking about how this site is going to be integrated with KWG and how the bill for consultants to advise on that could just run completely out of control and will consume any savings that are proposed by this move.

“For example, in the redevelopment of Vicarage Lane and the old Mecca bingo hall, we’ve spent £2m on consultants in trying to come up with a solution to that site and out of that we have achieved precisely the square root of nothing.

“So it is entirely possible that we could end up spending £2m paying for consultants to advise us on what to do with this site, what to do with the KWG site, and that kind of sum would easily consume any possible savings.”

In response, Cllr Ovenden said: “The aborted costs on that [Mecca Bingo] were something we were very, very keen to avoid when looking at this project.

“That may be why we don't have a whole host of consultants' bills in front of us at the moment.

“Is it not better to make the decision first? Any decision can be undone, we know that, anything we do as members can be undone.”

Cllr Ovenden said a bridge could be installed across the River Stour to link the current Civic Centre car park with International House.

Cllr Bernard Heyes (Con) said there were a “lot of unknowns about the Civic Centre” and raised concerns over the lack of a council chamber at International House.

“My major concern is about the ability to create anything like the council chamber at International House,” he said.

“I think a council with a mayoralty should have a proper council chamber - an auditorium like we're sitting in today - and that's more or less impossible over at International House.”

ABC says officers will be working “to shape the future of the council chamber” at International House.