Kitchener Street/Black Patch Park - A Bent Deal?

It is becoming a recurring theme of this blog that Labour Sandwell Council are attempting to do land sales without offering property on the open market. And here we go again....

On 29th October, 2014 Mahboob Hussain was due to chair a meeting of the Asset Management and Land Disposal (AMLD) Committee but, unfortunately, had to stand down (!) The agenda included an item for the sale of land off Kitchener Street, Smethwick. As ever, most of the documentation was hidden from public view and what little information there was available was subject to redactions. I duly made a Freedom of Information Request on your behalf. Now a strange picture is emerging and it looks like the comrades are trying to force through another dodgy deal using the usual excuse that it will create jobs.

Let me just set the scene a little if I may. Councils have a legal duty to secure the best value for land that they sell or lease. The law (foolishly in my opinion) gives them a bit of discretion to sell at an undervalue if there are good social or economic reasons so long as the sale price (or lease) is not more than two million pounds (a lot of money) under the "proper" price. (This is why I have another FoI request in to Eric Pickles for the reasons why he allowed SMBC to give the College a "free" lease for The Public - more on that anon).

For present purposes I am NOT suggesting any fraud but it goes without saying that the purpose of the law is to protect the public being ripped off by bent councillors. The best way to dispose of the land is my openly marketing (or auctioning) it. Of course, Sandwell Labour have a bit of form for "one-party" deals and are still at it eg the bent ice rink deal. They have become a bit anxious of late however (I can't imagine why...) and seem to have stopped the practice of having their own employees decide "fair value" - a POTENTIAL recipe for corruption. Having said that, the new modus operandi is to have a single valuer provide a valuation which is then kept secret from us taxpayers. I stress again that I am specifically not alleging fraud in this article but on general principles there are also grave dangers with this so-called "system". Let us imagine that a bent councillor wanted to influence the valuer's decision by bribery or other means. What if the sole valuer simply gets it wrong - this could be a multi-million pound mistake. OK the Council could sue for negligence but that could be a very unsatisfactory process.

Different laws apply preventing the council from supplying funds to a private company that is not available to others - this being unlawful state aid.

Now the crafty comrades want to sell a large area of land (2.95 hectares) off Kitchener Street, Smethwick but seem to have already stitched-up a potential deal with a party who intends to build a recycling plant on it. There are various problems which include (a) that SMBC may have cocked-up an earlier compulsory purchase order and may not actually OWN part of the land which they want to sell; (b) various other permissions are required eg because it was partly an old school site; (c) a highway will have to be stopped-up and, perhaps most significantly, (d) part of the land - Black Patch Park - is allocated as Community Open Space and cannot simply be built on (plus there appear to be restrictive covenants stating that the land must remain as open space).

Our old favourites Nick Bubalo and Stuart Kellas were the officers behind the scheme (Kellas has, of course, "disappeared" in mysterious circumstances which the sleazy socialists will still not reveal). The whole deal is being bounced through on the basis that the company behind the project was securing a Black Country Regional Development Grant (BCRDG) and would - allegedly - create 59 "jobs". Curiously the documents disclosed specifically state that SMBC itself administers the BCRDG scheme! Thus the Council is in on the grant application AND the land sale at an undervalue to the hitherto secret "purchaser". Even the incompetents at the Kremlin acknowledge that there may be "state aid implications"!!!! The would-be purchaser has allegedly stated they will build their plant elsewhere if Sandwell Labour won't sell them the land and so Hussain and his sidekick, Cooper, are apparently bending over backwards to help them!

The Council has neglected the park so that it is in a poor state but are now twisting this round and saying it would be better to develop the land because it is in, er, a poor state! Of course, the comrades themselves will decide any planning application relating to all this...... I wonder what they will decide!

Let us assume (!) that there has been no fraud or corruption here. It is still incumbent on the loony lefties to do everything "by the book". But the FoI reply gives cause for concern.

The reply is from another old friend, Dave Willetts, who mislead me in his FoI reply in the Bog-gate scandal. The first point of concern is immediate - SMBC categorically state that the land has NOT been offered for sale on the open market. Excuse my French but why the f*ck not! They are still refusing to disclose the potential value nor the proposed undervaluation price and so they are trying to slide this through without anyone else in the whole wide world being able to consider putting in a bid for it.

I asked for a copy of the valuation report. This has been obtained from a company called Aspinal Verdi and, no doubt, cost us taxpayers a lot of money. But then Willetts says, "The independent valuation report was NOT presented to the AMLD Committee although the valuation was referred to in the....committee report". Once again this smacks of everything being agreed beforehand (and, as ever, the actual meeting was very short). Nevertheless, three senior councillors (Crompton, Eling (!) and Ian Jones) were prepared to authorise a big land sale at a considerable loss to the taxpayer without even seeing the taxpayer-funded valuation report! How good is that?

And now it gets really weird. Willetts has disclosed the lucky purchaser to be "Smart Waste Limited" and this is what the legal Council documents say:

"It is proposed to dispose of the site to Smart Waste Limited. Smart Waste Limited is a new company formed in [redacted] by [redacted]"

Quite why the North Korean-style regime should still want to try and keep information about the highly-favoured purchaser secret is a mystery. (There was an old company called Smart Waste Limited which was dissolved in 2013 and there is no replacement company registered with that name although there was a company (based in Edgbaston) registered on 19th December, 2013 called Smart Waste Company Limited which may or may not be connected.)

Of course, Labour are saying they cannot give any further information as negotiations are continuing and claim "commercial sensitivity" but as they have, yet again, shut out all other bidders the information is not commercially sensitive but just SECRET!

Come on Comrades. Tell us the truth about all this. Now!

Police Fraud Team Hotline - 0121 251 2175 - DS Wayne Haynes and Team for any information on wrongdoing by Sandwell Council.

THE SANDWELL SKIDDER - A COMMUNITY BLOG - READ THE SKIDDER, KIDDER!

E-mail:   thesandwellskidder@gmail.com          Twitter:   bcrover (Vernon Grant)

Confidential phone number: 07599 983737