Former Chesterfield Register Office to be sold
The former Chesterfield Register Office has been sold for an undisclosed fee.
A meeting on Friday 17th April 2020 agreed the sale of the former register office and a two-storey house on the site. The three-storey former registry building sits next to the 45-space Beetwell Street multi-storey car park, opposite Tesco Metro and close to the Portland Hotel. It was built in the 1940s and used for four decades by residents registering births, marriages and deaths.
Derbyshire County Council said: “In principle and subject to planning permission, the site is suitable for a range of uses including residential, commercial office, community uses, healthcare or other institutional uses.”
“The site is not in the primary retail area or an otherwise established retail frontage, but could be suitable for retail or food and drink use of an appropriately limited scale.”
“We are advised that Chesterfield Borough Council’s preference would be for conversion and re-use of the existing buildings.”
In 2018, Chesterfield Register Office moved from New Beetwell Street into Chesterfield Town Hall and in November 2018, it welcomed the first families to register the births of their babies.
The new venue offers improved facilities for those who use the Register Office, and will offer a greater choice of rooms for weddings and civil partnerships. The new office is also much larger and includes separate waiting areas for people who are registering a birth to those who are registering a death.
Councillor Carol Hart, Derbyshire County Council Cabinet Member for Health and Communities said:“The register office has been in New Beetwell Street for over 40 years but wasn’t giving us the opportunity to offer the sort of services we want to.”
She also added that the new office in the town hall “will be a much better place to visit to register a birth or death, celebrate getting married or a civil partnership.”
The new register office also gives more space for the historic registers containing entries of all the births, deaths and marriages in Derbyshire since 1837.
Image credit: Derbyshire County Council
