Sandwell College - You Cynical B*stards!

I have pointed out before that the sh*ts at Sandwell College have been trying to lure thick local kids into their officially second-rate institution so that they can get more Government dosh, by exaggerating their abilities. This is not just immoral but must be actively damaging to other local institutions like Walsall College which genuinely does have an "outstanding" rating.

Months ago I pointed out their poster outside one of their two £70m+ publicly-funded buildings was grossly misleading and was attempting to suggest that the College somehow had an Ofsted "outstanding" rating whereas, in fact, it only had the lower grading of "good". The large print said "outstanding" whereas the small print stated the truth.

The young folk of Sandwell face enough difficult life challenges as it is but these deceitful empire-builders at the College just need bums on seats and are prepared to have the pants down of local kids before they have even got through the door.

Now the officially second-rate College has pushed this sh*tty marketing ploy even further. Type "Sandwell College" into Google and you will get this:

Of course, this deliberately misleading sh*t falls short of saying the College actually is "outstanding" but you will see the con trick they are trying to pull here and they are at it again on their re-vamped website. Here is the header:

Once again the marketeers have been paid serious amounts of taxpayers' dosh to dupe vulnerable young people by purposefully and cynically using the word "outstanding". Yes, it's a desperate, dirty business now education but who cares about the victims - they're just kids....

Now to something else concerning the College and the bent Public deal. And apologies here as The Skidder Team have missed something that was staring us in the face...

Again, I have pointed out on numerous occasions the uncomfortably close relationship between West Midlands Police (WMP) and Sandwell Council. The local plod have taken no interest in the bent Public deal even though Sandwell Council caused deliberate lies about the transaction to be placed in official public records - something that should surely start alarm bells ringing? Of course, as part of the bent deal Sandwell Labour forced the sleazy College to take Jan Britton - the laissez-faire "Chief Executive" of Sandwell Council - onto its Board of Governors and also to pay high rent to the, er, Labour Party in respect of Terry Duffy House (see posts passim)

But if you are going to lie to the people of Sandwell and beyond about the nature of a multi-million pound transaction you don't want people asking questions do you? And so on 26th November, 2012 the search committee of Sandwell College very "conveniently" recommended the appointment of a senior West Midlands Police officer - a Superintendent no less - as a suitable person to join the Board of Governors for a three-year term commencing 1st January, 2013 (at a time when the bent deal was under negotiation). I stress here that I specifically do not make any allegation of improper conduct etc against the Officer concerned but this appointment was an excellent way for the College and Council to "square" West Midlands Police and ensure they kept their noses out.

Beside Labour lying in official Council documents, both the College and the Council then went to great lengths to keep this "great deal for Sandwell", er, secret..... presumably the West Midlands Police officer Board member (whose appointment was confirmed) agreeing whole-heartedly with this stinking policy to keep you and I - taxpayers and voters - in the dark?

Of course, after much difficulty there IS now a Regional Fraud Team investigation into the affairs of the Labour Council but, yet again, WMP want to involve themselves in the murky world of Sandwell politics which doesn't give the man or woman on the street much confidence as to their impartiality.

Let me go off at a tangent here but please stay with me. Sandwell Labour's running dogs - The Wolverhampton Express and Star - have been persistently peddling the lie that the College is paying rent for The Public despite very clear evidence to the contrary - which they are well aware of but are choosing to ignore to help their Sandwell Labour friends. It came to my attention that Labour's bent deal was not only a potential breach of their legal obligations to dispose of land for the best possible price but also constituted a secret subsidy to the College.  In the circumstances, I put in a Freedom of Information request to the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) asking for the full documentation leading to the then Secretary of State approving the deal. After I bit of a cock-up I was finally informed that Sandwell Council had never applied for central Government approval in the first place!

Accordingly, on 26th March, 2015 I duly wrote to the then Secretary of State, Eric Pickles, copying in my own constituency MP, Sandwell Council, Sandwell College and the two-main funding bodies for the College - the Skills Funding Agency and the Education Funding Agency. The complete, unredacted, letter is set out at the bottom of this post.

I posted all six letters at the main post office in Kings Heath, Birmingham and actually saw them go in the "bag" but at least one party is claiming not to have received the letter. (I am aware that the SFA has now moved and the mail has been duly re-directed).

Of course, the election was coming up but none of the parties bothered to even acknowledge my letter let alone to respond.

Although, I have a Birmingham address the house where I live is just inside the border of Bromsgrove so that my MP is the Rt Hon Sajid Javid - recently promoted to Business Secretary. Ironically his new Department is responsible for the Skills Funding Agency and so, whereas in my letter to Eric Pickles I had just asked him to kindly keep a watching brief, he has now become a player on this little stage.

In the absence of a response from the DCLG and others I duly wrote to my MP recently asking him to chase matters up and he has now written to Jan Britton.

Clearly the people of Sandwell and beyond are being short-changed again over the bent deal and certainly cannot ever hope that WMP will ever look at what was really going on.

Oh and by the way, did I mention the name of the WMP officer on the College's Board of Governors? He is Superintendent Basit Javid - yes, the brother of the Rt. Hon. Sajid Javid who is now partly responsible for making decisions on the College's funding!!!! I have written to Mr Javid pointing out that there is now an obvious conflict of interest as far as him representing me a a constituent in this affair is concerned. Just who CAN Sandwell turn to for help to get to the truth about this bent deal?

In the words of Private Frazer, "we're all doomed, doomed....."

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

e-mail:  thesandwellskidder@gmail.com          twitter  @bcrover (Vernon Grant)

Confidential phone no: 07599 983737

Complete letter to Secretary of State - 26th March, 2015 - still unanswered after four months:

The Rt Hon Eric Pickles MP                                                       

Secretary of State for Communities etc                                           

2 Marsham Street                                                              26th March, 2015

London SW1P 4DF

Cc Jan Britton

     Chief Executive

     Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council

     Freeth Street

     Oldbury B69 3DE

Cc (In his capacity as my constituency MP)

     Rt Hon Sajid Javid MP

     18 High Street

     Bromsgrove B61 8HQ

Cc  Skills Funding Agency

      The NTI Building

      15 Bartholomew Row

       Birmingham B5 5JU

Cc  Education Funding Agency

      53-55 Butts Road,

      Coventry CV1 3BH

Cc   Ms Jill Berry

      Sandwell College

      Central Campus

      1 Spon Lane

      West Bromwich B70 6AW

Dear Secretary of State,

The Public, West Bromwich - s. 123 Local Government Act 1972

Some time ago Labour Sandwell Council decided, for political reasons, to shaft The Public Arts Centre in West Bromwich. I cannot even begin to tell you all that went on but am writing about a narrow but very important point.

Sandwell Labour have been flouting the provisions of s.123 regularly as far as I can ascertain (and, indeed, there is a CURRENT Regional Fraud Team police investigation in respect of certain land sales).

In this particular case, Sandwell Labour initially paid £39,000 (ex Vat) for ludicrous reports on possible other uses for the building but did not get the answers they hoped for. In the meantime, the political leadership of Sandwell had been nursing two major grievances in respect of your Government ie. (1) that Mr Gove had cancelled the Building Schools for the Future programme; and (2) that the brand-new Sandwell College building at Spon Lane, West Bromwich being - built with central Government funds - was not as large as they hoped for.

Accordingly, and even before the College moved into its brand-new £70m+ building Cllr Mahboob Hussain, Sandwell’s Deputy Leader approached the College and initiated discussions for them to take over a SECOND £70m + publicly paid for building - The Public.

I note that the spirit of s. 123 is that procedures for the disposal of land by Council’s should be open, transparent, competitive and market related. That was not the case here. The Office of the Information Commissioner still has a live case in respect of the failure of either the Council or the College to disclose the terms of their “unusual” deal even following Freedom of Information requests. The whole matter was (and to a certain extent still is) shrouded in secrecy but from the information in the public domain the story is a disastrous one. In short:

1  From Day One the College deal was the only game in town. At no point whatsover (unless done secretly) was the building marketed or subjected to any competitive disposal process. There was a feeble suggestion by the Labour Council that at one point “another College” was interested in the building but again, this was either just a pathetic negotiating ploy or simply an outright lie. Unfortunately, the publicly-funded College took full advantage of the Council’s ineptitude and played hard-ball on the negotiations as will be seen below. Whether this was done in the best interests of taxpayers is a moot point.

2  The Labour Council has not - as far as can be discovered - ever ascertained whether the building had a commercial use and/or enhanced market value IF MILLIONS WERE SPENT ON DESTROYING THE ORIGINAL LAYOUT - which was what actually happened. (This was never properly canvassed in the £39,000 reports from the property consultants). Of course, this may have led to further expenditure from the public purse but Labour were dead set on one solution and one solution only ie that the building would become the College’s second £70m+ building in 12 months! (Ironically, the SPECIFIC expert analysis in the outdated reports from the property consultants was that the building was most definitely NOT suitable for use as a school or college!)

3. Labour then used the old and defunct Building Schools for the Future EU procurement notice to avoid putting the contract for conversion out to tender and gifted the deal to Interserve (there are other serious issues surrounding that). They then borrowed somewhere in the region of £6m to pay Interserve on the basis that the College would pay them the loan back over 25 years. (I am assuming that central Government would not have allowed the College to take on this debt themselves). The Council has routinely lied to the local media saying that this loan repayment is “rent” when it is clearly no such thing.

4  For want of a better expression Secretary of State, the College and its lawyers then had Labour’s pants down as they knew the Council were committed to one deal only. The fact is, however, that this was a very substantial building in issue paid for from the public purse. Before conversion the square footage was a whopping 122,891 sq ft which at even a low figure rental figure of, say, £11 psf (considerably less that the Council itself was paying BT for  offices in the same town) then a tenant should be paying AT LEAST £1.35m per annum for the lease. Even without rent increases that is getting on for THIRTY FOUR MILLION POUNDS over 25 years.

(Incredibly, the College even managed to stitch-up the Council into paying for 25 years maintenance of the expensive building which, I don’t need to tell you, is virtually unheard of in a 25-year lease!)

5 It would appear that whilst the College are to pay back the conversion costs over the period of the 25 year lease they are actually paying either NO rent at all or just a peppercorn rent. This constitutes both a breach of s.123 and a colossal hidden subsidy of some £34m by the local Council to the College!

6  My understanding, if I have understood things correctly, is that pursuant to s.123 and Circular 06/03 Local Government Act 1972 General Disposal Consent (England) 2003 your consent is required where a disposal other than by way of a short tenancy (which is not the case here) is made and the undervalue is in excess of £2m - which is clearly the case here. Accordingly I put in a Freedom of Information Act to your Department to obtain the correspondence and to ascertain the reasons behind your decision to allow the transaction to proceed. After an unfortunate delay by your Department I received the FOI reply saying that no s. 123 application has ever been made to you! How can this be when there has been such a huge undervaluation on the lease?

7 This section is addressed to the SFA and EFA only. My understanding is that a further education college such as Sandwell gets the vast bulk of its funding from Central Government. As Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council have chosen to make a multi-million pound subsidy to the College instead will you please confirm that you will be decreasing Central Funding by an equivalent amount so that the taxpayer is not “paying-out” twice and so that Sandwell does not gain an unfair advantage in funding over other colleges in the area, such as the local Ofsted outstanding Walsall College. It has already gained a second £70m building just a year after the taxpayer paid for the brand new Spon Lane campus.

Please note that although I have a Birmingham address I live just inside the constituency of the Rt Hon Sajid Javid MP. I am not requesting at this stage that he, as my MP, involves himself in this matter but am copying him in so that he may ensure, if applicable, that I receive a proper reply.

If it is simpler to reply by e-mail please do so to thesandwellskidder@gmail.com

Yours faithfully,

JULIAN SAUNDERS

THE SANDWELL SKIDDER - A COMMUNITY BLOG