Article: Town Hall repair costs up from pounds 7.4m to pounds 31m; The building where Dickens read extracts from A Christmas Carol, Mendelssohn conducted his own work, Lloyd George railed against the Boer War and The Beatles drove contemporary audiences wild is coming back into public use. Chief Reporter Paul Dale looks at the battle to reopen Birmingham Town Hall.(News)

Byline: Paul Dale

Today's announcement that the restoration of Birmingham Town Hall is to be bolstered by pounds 13.5 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund marks the beginning of the end of a seven-year struggle to save the city's only Grade One listed building.

Since 1996, when the crumbling structure was closed on public safety grounds, the city council has struggled to both estimate the true cost of bringing the town hall back into use and find the funds to do so.

In June 2000 English Heritage declared the iconic building in Victoria Square to ...

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