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 25th 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.
