Issue - meetings

Councillor Colin Blackburn, Lead Call-in Member addressed the Panel, a summary of his submission is set out below.

The key focus of my words today are towards Transparency, Commercial Sensitivity and who is pulling the strings.

Bath Cricket Club approached the Cabinet Member responsible about 3 years ago to informally scope out the willingness to allow them to re-develop their land.  At that time, they made no reference to the fact the Council owned the ‘ransom strip’ in question.  The Cabinet Member was unaware of that fact, gave them positive feedback but a clear warning that the Administration’s Policy was ‘No more Student Blocks’.  Nothing further was said.  A year later, 8th September 2017 a planning application arrived from Gilltown Ltd, a student development company.  As they didn’t own the land in question, they correctly submitted Certificates of Ownership to B&NES and Bath Cricket Club.

I cannot find out who in B&NES at Lewis House received this, but it was a clear flag that someone wanted to build, on our land, something that clearly was against the Administration's Policy and at that stage the CEO, Leader and Cabinet members should have been made aware of our ownership of the ransom strip and key role in being able to determine what could be built on the site.

Work should also have started to create a report determining value, community benefits etc. 2 and half years ago and a transparent report created, on what was becoming a land transaction, and given to the leadership of this Council.  It wasn’t, B&NES could have stopped this application but someone in Property Services took it upon themselves to not inform anyone, ignore the elected administration’s stated policy regarding student accommodation, and must have entered into some form of negotiations with the developers.

Who was it that negotiated and on who’s authority?

I call upon our CEO to take swift and decisive action to regain control in the Property Services Department.  We have heard ‘a report’ is being done. This was stated after the last call in over 23 Grosvenor Place and told us there would be ‘refinement to its decision-making processes to ensure better democratic accountability and transparency’. I ask the CEO to publish a timeline when it will be completed, by whom and then publish the findings. 

How much is this land really worth? 30% of the development value I have been reliably told. At £150,000, this land is being cheaply given away to benefit a developer of a student block. We should be given the information that underpins the scant assumptions we have been told.  How Is the Community benefit actually measured? By definition, a random strip allows the owner to control what ultimately gets built there and extract a premium against the development. I think we have achieved neither.

Boosting the health of our community has been attributed a value of £2 million, a fantastic thing we can all agree but how has that figure been determined and why  ...  view the full minutes text for item 54