A PIECE of land sold by Warrington Borough Council for £44,000 was re-sold 16 months later for a massive £350,000.
The increase in value arose from the council subsequently granting planning consent for a development of affordable housing on the site, off Egerton Street and Farrell Street, Howley.
Complaints were subsequently made about management of the council’s assets and an investigation was carried out by the council’s internal audit team.
They found the council’s property and management team originally valued the land, based on planning advice, on a presumption it would be used for industrial purposes.
The council sold the land at auction in September 2010 to car dealers Marcus Brook Ltd.
In January this year, Muir Group Housing Association acquired it for £350,000 – after receiving planning advice in May last year indicating the possibility of development of the site and more detailed information on alternative uses for the land.
A report to the council’s audit and corporate governance committee by the internal audit service stated: “The re-sale of the land in January at a higher value reflected the successful planning application for residential development.”
Internal audit say the process of obtaining advice from planning with regard to sales could be formalised with clear supporting documentation about the advice received.
“The planning file contained clear information to support the application, however there was a lack of clarity over the delegated decision.”
The report concluded: “A detailed action plan has been agreed with management and action agreed, which once implemented, will improve controls around clarity of decisions taken.”
Cllr Chris Fitzsimmons (pictured), chairman of the audit and corporate governance committee, said: “The committee has accepted the report as far as it goes, but we feel there should be more transparency.
“We want to look at it more closely so it will be coming back to a future meeting of the committee.”
Probe into council land sale
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Gary Skentelbery
Experienced journalist for more than 40 years. Managing Director of magazine publishing group with three in-house titles and on-line daily newspaper for Warrington. Experienced writer, photographer, PR consultant and media expert having written for local, regional and national newspapers. Specialties: PR, media, social networking, photographer, networking, advertising, sales, media crisis management. Chair of Warrington Healthwatch Director Warrington Chamber of Commerce Patron Tim Parry Johnathan Ball Foundation for Peace. Trustee Warrington Disability Partnership. Former Chairman of Warrington Town FC.
21 Comments
I get the impression that the council just don’t take things seriously at all. Always very casual in what they do unless of course they want to hit the public.
This is simply disgraceful. It was an outrageous disgrace at the time to chop down about fifteen to twenty mature Trees and sell the last bit of “greenery in the area for “proposed Industrial use”….????? Imagine this being Swallowed in Lymm.
Where were the planning committee with their “outraged” objections then….?
WE are left with more houses on Farrel street added to the existing Riverside point Development and not a single change to the Road infrastucture.
THIS IS WHAT COUNCILlORS SHOULD BE OBJECTING TO, NOT A BUNGALOW IN SOME REMOTE SCRUBLAND OF LYMM……
But if people on the planning committee “represent” Lymm, Stockton Heath, and Penketh, then What Chance is there ever going to be of an objection to this type of planning disgrace in Warrington Town Centre.
Si, just like to point out that your local councillor for Howley IS on the planning committee, and that Lymm and Stockton Heath also have just one councillor each on it.
This is very basic stuff that even an untrained council worker should be getting right. When you are selling a building or piece of land the Council should be applying for the most profitable type of planning permission. Even if the council decides not to pursue enhanced planning ,as a matter of course it should be inserting a development clause as standard. At no charge to the council I attach a legally binding wording. “The land/building is subject to a development clause that, in the event of the granting of planning permission for any change of use , the purchaser or their successors in title are liable to pay 50% of the uplift in value on the granting of the permission for a period of 21 years from the date of completion.”
To add further, no land or property sales should be done under delegated powers. And frankly the response of the audit committee is lacklustre. I don’t really see the point of this committee if the best they can come up with is to limply say “we would have liked more transparency”.
That’d be sensible, idpf, I wonder if such a clause existed with the sale of the Peel Hall site? Land in public ownership…sold off for buttons…developer plans to make a killing, hmmm…
I think that you needed to be at the Committee to hear what was said. I lead the barrage of questioning and didn’t take any prisoners in making my views known about what I thought of this transaction. Lacklustre I am not.
Talk about calling the kettle black. Are’nt you one of those that supported the extortianate pay to the past chief executive Diana Terris so don’t give us that paul
Paul we have been asking for transparency (not to mention candour and probity) from the planning and legal departments for years until we’re blue in the face. But no one on the council seems in the slightest intent on rooting out the obvious problems that have been allowed to develop unchecked with the council.
You and your fellow councillors must accept that openness, transparency, rectitude, professionalism and responsibility are in very short supply on the council, if not non-existent. We have to put our trust in you and your colleagues to restore public confidence in the council. We do not have the power to deal with what you have allowed to go wrong but seem reluctant to put right. A recent example was the unwillingness of the vast majority of councillors to discuss the motion proposed by Cllr Axcell. Your committee badly handled the public inquiry but you were content to accept the destruction of records was a tidying up exercise.
Instead of facing up to and taking steps to restore public confidence in the council, most of you seem hell bent on moving on and giving vague valueless assurances of ‘lessons learned’; ‘a bit of muddled thinking’ etc. No one is prepared to take responsibility for their actions or lack of them. Now we hear “The planning file contained clear information to support the application, however there was a lack of clarity over the delegated decision.” And we are expected to be persuaded that “A detailed action plan has been agreed with management and action agreed, which once implemented, will improve controls around clarity of decisions taken.” Stable doors bolts and bolting horses spring to mind.
It’s a little late to say you were not lack lustre when the committee chairman sums up by saying “The committee has accepted the report as far as it goes, but we feel there should be more transparency.” We too would like to witness some transparency because so far we have none. All we get is responsibility passed around as if it were a parcel to be hastily disposed of.
Quote; “the council’s property and management team originally valued the land, BASED ON PLANNING ADVICE, on a presumption it would be used for industrial purposes”
Quote; “In January this year, Muir Group Housing Association acquired it for £350,000 – AFTER RECEIVING PLANNING ADVICE in May last year indicating the possibility of development of the site and more detailed information on alternative uses for the land.
Can we have the name or names of those who gave this contradictory planning advice please?
Yes, idontplayfootball the use of development clauses is common practice and should be used whenever council (public) land is sold. Obviously an investigation into WBC’s previous land and asset sales needs to be carried out. Oh! but we have no planning records to check now do we.
An intern paralegal would have been able to come up with a form of words that safeguarded the Council in this instance, if there had been an awareness and willingness to do so. What on earth were the planning and legal departments doing? More to the point what were the highly paid senior officers of each department doing? They get paid enough. Were they perhaps doing what senior highway officers were doing when bridgefoot road marking went pearshaped? We seem to have an overabundance of overpaid incompetents who are never called to account.
If you guy’s put just half as much effort into trying to solve this towns problems as you do calling each other we might not be in the mess we’re in right now. I don’t care who did what when or how in the past and nothing you can say is ever going to change what’s already occurred so for goodness sake move on.
“We seem to have an overabundance of overpaid incompetents who are never called to account.”
Very well expressed! 🙂
Here we go again. Having to decide between a conspiracy and a cock up. As Sha asks, there appears to be the now familiar modus operandi of planning officers advising one group of people one way while advising another group another way. Given the amount of money involved there is clear scope for yet more questions to be asked about who stood to gain. Ultimately this is either a cock up, in which case the planning and legal department are incompetent or something else. Our councillors should accept that those are the two choices, stop blethering about indefinable nonsense like ‘transparency’ and ‘clarity’, and start asking some extremely serious questions about what the hell is going on. The ultimate aim should be to inculcate a culture in which we don’t have to put up with this sort of nonsense. A start would be to accept that the people of Warrington are not stupid enough to accept that what is needed is a few more ‘controls’. Those are irrelevant when you have a department that doesn’t care about them any more they do the law.
I think we need to learn lessons from where things have gone wrong. It’s impossible to ‘move on’ if the same things keep happening over and over again. People were pointing out that a new scandal would emerge weeks ago because nobody is ever held to account when things go wrong and our councillors are too supine to ask the most challenging questions. So here we are, all too predictably being asked to swallow the same meaningless drivel about controls, systems and clarity when what we have here is patently either incompetence or something else. How long before the next one? I’ll give it till March or April.
How many acts of incompetence have to occur, be fatuously dismissed with the now usual assurance of lessons learned, before some one actually takes responsibility for their actions? Instead of the council’s motto of “pass the buck” when are those who are well paid for their incompetence going to face facts and accept the buck stops with them? Peter Ustinov said corruption was nature’s way of restoring our faith in democracy. Perhaps he was right.
No, not as I recall
The silence from those we elected is as usual deafening. Not a word of contrition or explanation on why this and all the other piffiling lack of clarities have been allowed to occur without those responsible being held to account. Consistently we seem to elect members who accept without question (or maybe out of fear?) the unconvincing and often pathetic explanations from those who have brought the council into disrepute. Why is this? What control do those who think little of continually sullying the council's name have over those we elect in the hope they will put things right and so restore confidence?
You cant be serious over one crowd controlling the other, how do you know?
Bernie, you can’t be serious if you’re saying you haven’t heard the ‘conspiracy theories’ that are circulating around the town!
How far does a conspiracy theory have to run before it becomes fact? Bernie where have you been these past few years? WBC has been a hot bed of mind over don’t matter controls for some time.