THE cost of West Somerset Council's move to new centralised offices is set to hit £4 million. The council has consistently said its new Williton offices would cost £2.9 million - and while the building and design work for them is likely to be close to the £3 million mark, the authority this week revealed that an additional sum close to £1 million had been spent on its aborted attempts to relocate to Minehead. But the council maintains that although the relocation was unsuccessful, not all the costs were lost as some of the money went on studies which were able to be re-used for the Williton development. The council's cabinet will be told at its meeting next Wednesday that the office move is expected to have cost £4,010,900 by the time it is completed, that figure including a 7.5 per cent "contingency allowance" in case of unforeseen costs. It does not include the bill for groundworks which the district council carried out on the county council-owned market site alongside the railway, which are believed to have cost around £150,000. After the council decided to try and build centralised offices in Minehead in 2003, it focused on three potential development sites in Minehead. In each case, consultants were brought in to conduct feasibility studies to support the authority's case for each site - Clanville car park, the market site and finally Blenheim Road. Architects were also employed before the authority eventually opted for the Killick Way site in Williton after all three of the Minehead options fell through. Clanville was ditched due to the constraints and costs of the site and the market site was abandoned after Somerset County Council withdrew its support for the scheme in the face of public opposition. The Blenheim Road idea was lost after local businessman David Gliddon bought the neighbouring property, which the council had earmarked for its expanded headquarters. In his report to the cabinet meeting, Adrian Dyer, the council's acting head of paid service, says the Williton scheme is between six and eight weeks behind schedule. He will tell councillors £1.73 million has already been paid out by the authority, while a further £2.27 million budgeted for in the coming months. Of the £2.27 million, some £2.05 million will go on contractors and consultants, £64,500 on capitalised salaries and £54,800 on the relocation of telephones and information technology. A further £48,400 has been set aside for "general contingencies", £27,700 on furniture, £10,800 on the relocation of staff and £5,800 on the cost of providing alternative car parking. Allison Griffin, the council's temporary finance director, will tell councillors it is vital each element of the scheme is kept under close scrutiny to minimise any "adverse effect". "Based on the information available, the estimated full cost of the project stands at just over £4 million, which takes account of the range of internal works and the relocation of staff," she says. "With any project of this magnitude there are inevitable variations from the original budgets for the various elements of the work and the current figures have provided, as far as possible, for this."