Priory House Chicksands
Priory House April 2015
The Headquarters for the unitary authority of Central Bedfordshire is located at Priory House, Monks Walk, in Chicksands. Central Bedfordshire Council was formed on the 1st of April 2009 by amalgamation of Mid Beds District Council and South Beds District Council and transfer of powers from Bedfordshire County Council which was abolished on that day. Central Bedfordshire Council is made up of 59 councillors and serves over 260 000 people in Central Bedfordshire.
In 2006 Hamiltons architects built Priory House as the headquarters of the now Mid-Bedfordshire Council. Previously the council's headquarters had been divided between buildings in Ampthill and Biggleswade and it was felt that Chicksands was roughly half-way between the two localities. Priory House is a brick building with a flat roof. At the west end sits a circular council chamber with full-height glass outer wall. There are long office fingers to the north (The Buildings of England: Bedfordshire Huntingdonshire and Peterborough, Charles O'Brien and Nikolaus Pevsner, 2014).