Derby Assembly Rooms

You will be aware that during May there was a planning committee meeting to consider the outline application for the Assembly Rooms site. The City Council have revised the original planning approval conditions to demolish the Assembly Rooms so that the approval of the outline application could trigger their demolition. Once the building is demolished the City Council propose to build a hotel, office block and community facilities paid for by £60 million of public money and £40 million of private finance over a long period of time potentially leaving a hole in the ground between building contracts.

From a purely planning point of view the Outline Application does not include any detailed plans, sections and elevations of the proposed new replacement buildings only outline design guides and we believe any scheme should be detailed, this is the most important civic space in Derby in our opinion and its architecture in context of the listed buildings is too important to leave to chance. No car parking provision is included in the scheme either, despite the proposed requirement for hotel and offices. 

The Derby Telegraph reported on the 20th of April 2026 that, "there are calls from all sectors of the Derby Community (and that Includes Derby Civic Society) urging the City Council to go back to the drawing board with its plans to regenerate the Market Place."

We have therefore decided to produce an alternative proposal to keep the Assembly Rooms, refurbish and convert the ground floor area and use the Darwin Suite for the new South Derbyshire Authority Council chamber, view the proposal here or open the link button at the bottom of this page.

We roughly estimate that the cost for the project would be £35 million plus a contingency of £15 million, If it was proven that part of the RAAC concrete roof required replacement. The project would take approximately 18 months to 2 years to complete, and it could be phased to help with cash flow. 

Derby Civic Society decided long ago , straight after the fire in 2014, to support the reopening of the Assembly Rooms and its car park and we believe that their continued closure has been one of the main factors in the decline of the Market Place and this area of the Cathedral Quarter. We believe that our proposal to keep the Assembly Rooms is the most cost-effective and sustainable way forward and will quickly bring the Market Place back to life again.