A forthcoming second homes tax windfall could be used to repair Falmouth's municipal building rather than bring down council tax, councillors have been told.

At a meeting of Falmouth Town Council’s finance and general purposes committee last week committee chair Jude Robinson said the council was facing a challenging year ahead.

They were told the municipal building on The Moor which housed the council chamber, the library and the art gallery needed “millions” spent on it to make it safe for the council and public to use.

Finance officer Ruth Thomas told the committee an application for funds had been unsuccessful but other sources of funds have been identified.

“Everything is going up,” she said. “We still haven’t had financial settlement pay deal for this year yet, we're still in limbo for that.

“We should keep everything as low as we can but recognise there are some pressures coming up.”

She said Cornwall Council will be implementing second homes levy soon but they didn’t know the specifics yet.

She said basically though if a second home wasn’t let for the majority of the year then the owners would be the subject of a levy that comes to the town council help to deliver services.

“We don’t know how much it is going to be,” she said. “We don’t know how long we’re going to get it for and if we use that levy to reduce our precept request, then there is no guarantee that it will be there in years two, three, four or five.

“If we reduce our precept in year one then we may find ourselves in trouble as the amount we receive will probably be reduced as it is expected that many people will sell their houses, reducing the income obtained from the levy.”

She said her recommendation is to look at what the council can do with the levy for the community bearing in mind it probably won’t be there for that long.

Cllr Alan Rowe said the money from the levy should go towards repairing the municipal building but he was keen to keep the precept below inflation and that should be their aim.

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However Cllr Alan Jewell said they should use the second homes levy to keep the precept at zero.

Cllr Dean Evans said until the second homes levy was in the council’s pockets they didn’t know what it was going to be and he thought the money should be set aside for one year and then used for a capital project.

Cllr Steve Eva said they are talking about a minimum of two and a half to three million pounds to make the municipal building safe and proper for another 100 years.

“You can’t possibly do that within the precept,” he said. “It’s just not possible, you can’t squeeze the people any more.

“We should concentrate on what we have to deliver and things we don’t have to deliver we take a serious look at.”