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| Aerial shot courtesy of Google |
Lion Farm 19ha Green Space - Oldbury
THIS IS NOT A PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL COMMUNICATION
I am addressing this letter to two recipients. Mr Javid is my own MP and I write to him in that capacity as well as in his capacity as Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government as there are issues of general local governance of serious concern here. The Chief Constable has led a police force that has done its best to avoid investigating their “friends” in Sandwell Council as rightly exposed by James Morris MP recently. This particular matter was seemingly NOT part of the catastrophic RFT “investigation” into Sandwell nor in the Wragge Report which was used by WMP as an excuse to close down any further enquiries.
Lion Farm fields constitute a huge area of the ever-shrinking green space in Sandwell. There is almost total secrecy surrounding a project by Sandwell Council to sell the land to a property developer who wishes to build a “designer shopping village” there - even though it is close to major shopping centres at Merry Hill and in Birmingham City centre and a brand new “designer village” is being built just 13 miles away in Cannock.
The fields are supposed to be held in trust for the people of Sandwell (hence why I am copying this letter to Fields in Trust.)
I can do no better than to refer recipients to my blog:
http://thesandwellskidder.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/lion-farm-fields-major-fraud.html
It is of major concern that the developer was seemingly “introduced” to Sandwell Council in 2012 by disgraced Cllr Mahboob Hussain shortly after the developer bought the former Rickshaw Restaurant in Dudley from Hussains son, Azeem Hafeez, for £470,000 although Hafeez bought it for just £85,000 (at the time Hafeez was an employee of the Council and it is not clear whether he paid tax on this colossal capital gain.)
Sandwell Council are trying to hide this deal by ludicrously calling the plan “Junction 2 Regeneration” when it is no such thing (indeed, if it goes ahead then, at least in the short term, congestion around Junction 2 is likely to be significantly worse.) It seems that this development does not accord with the local plan and so the Secretary of State may be involved in this scandal in his official capacity in due course.
Sandwell Council have an appalling record in answering Freedom of Information requests and you will see how they are again trying to conceal the facts in my current FOI request:
I believe much of this obfuscation is absolutely deliberate. We have seen before that the Council seem to be deliberately concealing information so as to thwart any attempts by interested parties to seek judicial review of their decisions. It is extremely worrying here that in the latest Cabinet Report prepared to promote the scheme and grant an extension of a mysterious and still secret “option” to the developer that this is said at paragraph 14.2:
“Once the development has progressed, planning permission has been considered and the judicial review period expired, a further report will be brought back to cabinet for consideration.”
How does one even know when the “judicial review period” starts and finishes when the whole deal is being kept under wraps? How can anyone know that they have a case for judicial review when the whole deal is shrouded in secrecy? (There can be no question of commercial confidentiality since the Council has already locked out all competitors to Cllr Hussain’s friend.)
To the Chief Constable
This is not just the sale of some old toilet blocks. This is a multi-million pound development. The manner of the introduction, the way Cllrs Hussain and Hackett waived this through, the possible involvement on the deal of disgraced employee David Willetts and the unwarranted secrecy - even now - should be setting red lights flashing and urgent police investigation is required. If there has been fraud the whole wretched deal can be set aside.
The Wragge Report’s authors did not have police powers and no-one could be compelled to give evidence - so they didn’t. The solicitors believed that Cllr Hussain had been in breach of the Council’s Code of Conduct and, more importantly, said that he had POSSIBLY been in breach of the provisions of the Bribery Act (see paras 4.13.6 and 4.13.11). The Wragge Solicitors specifically state they did NOT investigate the option given to the developer (para 4.13.10.)
Thus no-one appears to have investigated any of this and the police have the power to seize documents and to compel witnesses to be interviewed under caution (though they can, of course, choose to remain silent.)
To The Secretary of State/My MP
I appreciate that Sandwell is a corrupt Council which does not “play by the rules”. I have raised some issues above with regard to secrecy, the difficulties in challenging decisions by Judicial Review and the shocking failure to comply adequately or at all with the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
I refer above to my Freedom of Information request in this matter (above) and you will see that SMBC - a public body - claim to have no documents relating to initial meetings and no correspondence between the parties! How can that possibly be?
Time and again Sandwell have sought to thwart the effect of the FOIA by holding unminuted and otherwise unrecorded secret meetings. This is totally unsatisfactory, particularly when taxpayer-funded officers are involved as well as Councillors. As Secretary of State I believe that this whole area needs urgent review and that all meetings - particularly involving officers - must be minuted or otherwise recorded.
By way of example (and your brother should be able to tell you about this) there were a series of secret meetings (still secret to this day) - some involving taxpayer-funded SMBC officers - concerning the corrupt deal to transfer The Public Arts Centre to Sandwell College.
Sources say that a “deal” to build an ice rink in Sandwell was brokered by Lord Peter Snape but SMBC say there is no record of the initial meetings. Thus it is impossible to ascertain who attended. It is highly likely that taxpayer-funded staff were involved as THEY then tried to find an appropriate site for it at taxpayers’ expense!
Chief Executive (and thus paid by the taxpayer), Jan Britton, stated that he had made a thorough “investigation” into allegations that Cllr Hussain (see above) had failed to declare interests in a taxi firm which successfully bid for part of a valuable contract and yet claims not to have recorded or minuted details of the alleged investigation and his findings anywhere!
With regard to the sale of the toilet blocks and other land to Cllr Hussain’s son or associates the initial meetings are all unminuted. Here the position is the same though, as above, this is a multi-million pound proposed development.
Clearly this is a wholly unsatisfactory situation and needs to be nipped in the bud here and nationwide. What does the Secretary of State propose.
As my MP I understand that you cannot involve yourself (yet) in the current police investigations into me but on the wider issue of use of police resources it is ironic that the WMP “complex crime” unit is currently spending hundreds of hours trying to close down my “Sandwell Skidder” blog and yet are doing nothing to investigate the above scandal which has been known to WMP for some time (matters relating to the Rickshaw Restaurant were discussed with DS Wayne Haynes and another officer when I gave evidence (as a witness) to the WMP Regional Fraud Team as long ago as November, 2015! It is now March, 2018.)
I request that you encourage the Chief Constable to arrange a thorough investigation here or, better still, to let an outside force in to do the necessary given the extremely unhealthy links between WMP and SMBC.
Yours faithfully,
PHONE 9am to 9pm - 07930 361831 Facebook: Julian Saunders
Email: thesandwellskidder@gmail.com
Keep your thieving hands off those fields they don't need anymore shopping villages around here its for the people to use at leisure
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