Having successfully negotiated an additional £600m loan for Cornwall Council in 2018, during a speech in Council Chambers in which he described his own efforts for the Threemilestone Truro Western Corridor “a mess”, Phil Mason is still no further forward with the FREE stadium for Cornwall, nine (9) years on, since the developers promised to provide Cornwall with it, back in 2012. But the council have managed to pay out £60m (yes, sixty million pounds) on the scheme, in the past three years. How many stadia, let alone council homes, could Truro have had with £60m, we wonder?!!
www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/lidl-starts-building-new-store-4905588
To add insult to injury, Cornwall Council have now allowed Lidl to set up home on Truro City’s Football ground at Treyew Road, opposite Sainsbury’s. Adding a third large supermarket along that stretch, where none existed 25 years ago, presumably for the new Arch Hill development which was deemed unsafe and unsustainable 5 years ago, but was pushed through on appeal when Phil Mason and his team forgot to show up!
Let’s just remind ourselves quickly how and why we lost the TCFC site in the first place – not a million miles from the land Truronians lost to Wain Homes at Tregolls Farm 25 years ago (which belonged to the people of Truro to remain green space in perpetuity) or the carparking at Treliske Hospital, which was bequeathed for free parking for hospital staff, but now sees patients pay a small fortune to use whilst many staff park at Thremilestone and walk in!
When Chairman Kevin Heaney got into difficulty with his interestingly named Cornish Homes company, he was forced to pay back many creditors as he was made bankrupt in court in Exeter – though still owing small local businesses around £35m (which he still owes). Lloyds seized the land which was in his name; now how did this former London plumber, with large assets in greater London, manage to “persuade” trustees of the site to hand over the football ground for nothing (some say he paid £1 for it), when again, this land belonged to the people of Truro?!!
Come forward ten years and there we go again, another supermarket within walking distance of the town centre, another lost greenfield site that belonged to locals, and still no sign of any new sports stadium in sight, free or otherwise.
Thanks for all your efforts, Phil Mason and your obviously well-oiled planning machine.
A quick reminder of the chaos to come between Treliske and Chiverton Cross:
Langarth Garden Village, part of employed officers’ ego plans to urbanise Cornwall.
As the majority of you are council taxpayers this should be of serious concern to you. The attachment below, recently privately obtained from Land Registry, is just another example of the kind of information Cornwall Council has withheld from us in the past, under the guise of being commercially confidential. This project will use money borrowed at council taxpayers expense without guaranteed security of returns, and as such resembles a financial gamble.
A 25-page update report on this project, recently presented to the council’s cabinet, highlighted seven major risks with which going ahead with this project would entail, with at least five showing the possibility of increased costs, this uncertainty, along with many other anomalies, does not inspire confidence in the project’s viability.
With the exception of the ten cabinet members, who are often used as the voice of employed officers, elected members were not involved or aware of this land purchase or its cost until it was announced by a cabinet member that the deal had been done under pressure from employed officers and was conducted one day before the Prime Minister advised not to conduct any further land deals because of the pandemic and the unprecedented future. This invites the question why? Your guess is as good as mine.
I stand by my opinion that the Langarth Garden Village project is nothing more that an officers’ pursued cosmetic and ego satisfying exercise, lacking in transparency and accountability, which will result in a financial gamble that will inflict a millstone around the necks of present and future tax payers for many years to come. Apart from creating doubt and suspicion, this project borders on maladministration of public money.
And here’s how one Truro Councillor questioned the whole farcical – and expensive – lunacy:
26 November 2020
A COMMENT ON THE COUNCILOR HARRIS PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Administration continues to dodge questions about controversial Langarth development
Questions have been raised about the competency of senior councillors at County Hall after both the Leader of Cornwall Council and the councillor responsible for housing were unable to answer questions on the controversial Langarth development.
At today’s Full Council meeting Truro councillor David Harris asked the following of the council’s leader:
“You will have seen [the recent news article] which points out that when this Council spent £36 million buying land at Langarth at the start of lockdown it paid £1.45 million for a small piece of land over which it intends to build a road.”
“It now appears that the building of this very road is precluded by a covenant on the land which the Council will now have to pay what is probably a very significant sum to get out of.”
“Looking at the publicly available Land Registry documents there seems to be little doubt about this. So can I ask a couple of very simple questions;
1. Who, specifically, signed the relevant purchase contract
2. Who at Cabinet and Officer level approved the contract, in view of the amounts involved I would be amazed if this wasn’t at the most senior level
3. What legal advice, both internal and external, was provided about this issue and was the advice followed
4. Are you happy that there are not any similar “wonderful deals” waiting to bite us in “the behind”
Bizarrely the Leader answered by saying he knew nothing about the issue but would provide a written reply. The Councillor responsible for Housing then stepped in, but said that he had nothing to add, and that a written response would be forthcoming.
However, within 15 minutes of this response the deputy leader of Cornwall Council said that “we did know all about this matter and everything was properly considered at the right time.”
Speaking after the debate, Councillor Harris said:
“I almost cannot believe that the Leader would not know what was going on about this large and strategic development, either at the time the questionable decisions were made or that he would not have been briefed on what was in the press which could quite possibly give rise to a question at today’s Full Council meeting.”
“If this is the case then what on earth is going on where the Deputy Leader seems to know about fairly important commercial decisions of which the Leader has no knowledge? Surely a matter where a commercial view on such a major application has to be taken would come to Cabinet”.
“I look forward to getting the full and substantive replies in time and will continue to speak up on this issue on behalf of the Cornish taxpayer if the administration is unwilling or unable to manage itself properly.”
If you can, please also support this lady in her battle with South West Water (aided and abetted by CC) who continue their 11-year persecution of some residents of Hayle (it will soon be apparent other villages have the same issues) due to shockingly poor infrastructure and its obvious side-effects...
www.gofundme.com/f/helping-mel-sheridan-in-her-battle-4-justice