No doubt many of you have hastened down to Lodge Street in Oldbury to visit the showhome on the 14 house development currently being built there. I just thought I would up-date you on the latest news.....
Regular readers will remember that this nice, cleared, "development-ready" site was marketed by Sandwell's failing Labour Council via a glossy 20-page "prospectus":
file:///C:/Users/Julian/Downloads/Lodge_Street-StoneStreet_Development_Prospectus.pdf
but despite all this the crafty comrades then decided to sell the large plot for the price of a terraced house - just £145,000 - to the son of Cllr Hussain, Azeem Hafeez, who was, at the time, also working in Nick Bubalo's "Regeneration and Economy" department. (Is he STILL employed by SMBC?)
The planning permission for this "major" development was nodded through and Cllr Roger Horton moved that other planning matters for this major development would be delegated to, er, Nick Bubalo in consultation with the Chair of Planning, the multiple-named Cllr Frear, and the Vice Chair, Cllr Downing.
The application was for just FOURTEEN three and four bedroom houses but an application was later made to include one five bedroom house among the 14. Happily, Mr Bubalo readily agreed "in consultation with the Chair and Vice-Chair of Planning".
Employee Azeem has now sold the whole plot for, er, £145,000 to Broadwell Developments Limited of Digbeth, Birmingham and so has got a few quid in his pocket. Oh well, I suppose he won't now have to pay any personal Capital Gains Tax on the land having sold it for what he paid for it.
Broadwell have borrowed £450,000 on the security of the land - presumably - to fund the rest of the building works.
In the meantime, the shifty "socialists" have (sort-of) confirmed that employee Azeem has only bought two properties off Sandwell Council but that he has also unsuccessfully bid on "approximately 30" other Council properties over the last two years! The comrades are very conveniently refusing to disclose details of the properties their employee has bid on pursuant to a Freedom of Information request as they claim it will take over EIGHTEEN hours to locate the information! It would be lovely to know who the successful bidders were, wouldn't it readers? The letter refusing disclosure has been signed by none other than Mr Bubalo himself whom one may have thought may have been aware of the bids one of his own department's staff was allegedly making on publicly-owned property. Obviously not.
Azeem has set his lawyers on The Skidder but perhaps it would be a nice conciliatory gesture if he now contacted me with the details of his unsuccessful efforts.
And so Azeem's interest in Lodge Street is no-more. Oh, hang on a minute, I "forgot" (Hussain-style) to mention that the former registered office of Broadwell Developments Ltd was 51 McKean Road and that there is a single director of the Company who owns 100% of the shares. Step forward Mr Azeem Hafeez!
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