THE BRITISH Library’s ambitions for a major new centre in the north of England will take a significant step forward next week when senior councillors in Leeds are asked to back plans to inject up to £5m of funding into the project.

The funding would be used to protect and stabilise Temple Works, a Grade I listed building in Leeds’s South Bank area that the British Library is looking to develop in partnership with Leeds City Council and developer CEG.The stabilisation work is urgently needed both to protect the building, which is on Historic England’s Heritage at Risk Register, and to enable detailed investigatory work to assess the viability of transforming it into a new home for the British Library in Leeds.

A meeting of the council’s executive board on Wednesday, July 21, will discuss plans for the necessary funding to be drawn down from the £25m committed by the Government to support the British Library project as part of the West Yorkshire devolution deal. A report from council officers to members recommending the step says the British Library centre represents a cultural and heritage-led proposal of international significance that would act as a catalyst for wider regeneration delivering new jobs and homes.