COUNCIL meetings are set to return to their spiritual home in an historic grade one-listed building after an eight-year hiatus.

Work to install facilities for disabled access at the Guildhall on Church Street including ramps and a new stairlift has now been completed meaning Harwich Town Council will be able to hold meetings there for the first time since April 2007.

The building will also now be free to host exhibitions cultivated by the town council’s honorary archivists which are held to mark anniversaries and milestones.

Deputy mayor Pam Morrison said she was delighted the Guildhall will be fully operational again.

She said: “There are very few councillors still serving who know what it is like to have meetings at the Guildhall and it is totally different in there.

“It is a fabulous building which is there to be used – not just for the meetings but for exhibitions as well.

“It will be great to have people coming in and out freely.

“We are very grateful to have been able to use the 1912 Centre for so long but the acoustics are so different and there is not the same feel to the building.

“The Guildhall has a fantastic aura and it just feels like the council is where it should be.”