A plea for sanity

It’s taken a long time but finally Bolsover Council has told the public what it is doing with some of its money at least.

The Council minutes for the 25^th April 2012 have only just become available and state that the overall expenditure requirement for Clowne Campus is £5.884m and the cost of the mini-hub in Bolsover are put at £2.433m making a total of £8.3m if everything goes according to plan. The minutes don’t tell us what they hope to sell Sherwood Lodge to Morrison’s for but with opposition from the public, traders and organisations in the town growing rapidly, they may get a lots less than they think for it. In the meantime they are funding this entire pipe-dream by borrowing money.

 

Can we trust the Council with this mega-deal? Well in all honesty it hasn’t got a good reputation. Last year the External Auditors told the Council that they had “fundamental errors” in reconciling income and expenditure and “Significant governance weakness in contract arrangements”. Even a Council with the very best financial controls would know that in major developments, especially in a Conservation area, can easily have over-runs of 25% or more. On this basis Bolsover DC would need to be getting well over £10M from Sherwood Lodge just to balance the books.

 

The truth is that the whole deal doesn’t stack financially, environmentally, socially or for the economic health of Bolsover. The public of Bolsover want to keep Sherwood Green as a park and the traders of Bolsover certainly don’t want to lose Middle Street car park. Currently Morrison’s haven’t even applied for planning permission for Sherwood Lodge and the prospects of its being granted are rapidly disappearing over the horizon.

 

By failing to consult the pubic properly, the Council has got this badly wrong. It has rushed to the very edge of a financial cliff and is teetering n the brink. There is however still time for them to wake-up smell the coffee and put a stop to the whole calamitous exercise. They can then do what every other Council has done and start the savings exercise by implementing the findings of their own independent panel on member’s remuneration (which would save over £400,000) and then come out of their ivory tower and work with the public to make Bolsover better again.