Council
23rd June 2010 - Continuing Secrecy over Plans for Canal Corridor North
Because Lancaster City Council continues to further their plans for the CCN site under a continuing veil of secrecy, our co-ordinator Cal Giles made a request on the 20th May under the Freedom of Information Act requesting information about communications and meetings between Lancaster City Council, Centros and Mitchells Breweries. LCC's press release of June 1st stating that the city council "will be consulting with the communities of the district" appears to be an empty promise. Below, we detail the FOI request, the response we received and our comments.
FOI Request
The dates and times of meetings between the City Council, Centros and Mitchells between January 2010 to date including both two way and three way meetings between LCC, Centros and Mitchells.
The agenda for these meetings and the action points agreed at the meetings
Copies of all correspondence , e-mails and faxes between LCC, Centros and Mitchells, from January 2010 up to and including the meeting held yesterday the 19th May 2010 between LCC, EH, Mitchells, and Centros.
Response
On the 18th June the following reply was received from the PA to CEO Mark Cullinan suggesting that information about the negotiations is being tightly controlled from the very top.
Dear Cal,
I have been asked to respond to your FOI request below.
Meeting dates are as follows:
27 January 2010 - LCC and Centros - Informal discussions - no agenda or notes of the meeting
10 February 2010 - LCC and Mitchells - Informal discussions - no agenda or notes
15 April 2010 - LCC and Centros -Informal discussions - no agenda or notes
19 April 2010 - LCC and Mitchells - Informal discussions - no agenda or notes
19 May 2010 - LCC, Centros, English Heritage and Mitchells - Formal meeting no agenda, but notes are attached.
With regard to your request for correspondence, I attach copies of relevant correspondence had between LCC and Mitchells and LCC and Centros.
Comment
We find the absence of any records for four meetings over a period of seven weeks involving Lancaster city council, developer Centros and local landowner Mitchells Breweries hardly credible and a matter of great concern. There does not even appear to be a record of who attended these meetings, let alone what was discussed or decided. To us, this suggests a deliberate attempt to conceal the nature of the relationship between Lancaster City Council, Mitchells Breweries and Centros, that seeks to exclude the public from any participation in plans for the development of the CCN site.
It should be remembered that Centros refused to attend the public inquiry to defend their plans last year but somehow convinced our council to spend £50,000 of taxpayers money defending the plans for them. After the council was compelled to withdraw prematurely from the public inquiry, the chief planning officer then went on record threatening to sue Centros for costs. In a remarkable turnaround, LCC is now progressing this controversial development with the same developer without making any records of ongoing negotiations between the parties.
Given the enormous sums of taxpayers money that have been lost by Lancaster Council in past development deals that have turned sour, since the more than £2 million loss due to the notorious Blobbygate case in 1994, and given the potential legal and financial implications of not keeping proper records of meetings and communications with developers or other interested parties, this shows a reckless disregard for the financial well being of the council and the interests of local taxpayers and residents.
We have recently seen how senior LCC officers handled the case of the indoor market and ASCO. In that case, publicly available evidence on ASCO and its fly-by-night director Ted Ward who has now been barred from being a company director for 12 years, was enough to stir a public outcry that avoided a costly mistake to local taxpayers and saved the livelihoods of the indoor market traders.
As reported in the Virtual Lancaster News article Asco: Council's response on Cushman & Wakefield contract
Quote:
even after all the local press had published details of Ward's horrendous history;
even after Ward's other company, Blackhurst and Ward, had gone into liquidation owing £600,000 obtained through misrepresentation;
even after news of the legal case being brought against Asco by its unpaid creditors reached the national business press; and
even after Cllr Thomas resigned from his post as leader of the Cabinet on 1 March saying, ""Publicly available evidence highlighting the risks involved in this proposal was not included in the exempt report delivered to Cabinet",
the council's chief executive, Mark Cullinan confidently declared:
“Proposals of the sort involving Lancaster Market are put before Cabinet only after they have been rigorously scrutinised using professional means by the council’s officers, including the taking of external expert advice where necessary."
On 25th March 2010 LCC Director of Regeneration Heather McManus dismissed the public outcry as 'speculation' but a month later Asco was put into administration and legal proceedings were initiated.
In the Morecambe Visitor article in 2003 following the district auditors report into the Blobbygate affair, CEO Mark Cullinan said that new measures he had introduced to ensure that such a situation would never happen again included 'Officers must now provide full information to the decision making body - not simply brief a group of members'.
As Centros is not a public company, there is virtually no publicly available information about it apart from its own PR. If senior LCC officers could not see the ASCO fiasco coming, despite the freely available information, then we have to wonder what dangers to the local economy lie beneath the surface in their negotiations with Centros and Mitchells Breweries since they have already demonstrated a singular lack of business acumen and insight in their statements about ASCO.
A further disconcerting revelation from the ASCO case is that an agent representing both LCC and ASCO previously worked for Donaldsons, who brokered the development agreement between LCC and Centros Miller (as it was then before Miller pulled out). It seems to us that there are common threads in all this; a culture of secrecy and incestuous business relationships that work against the best interests of local taxpayers. The lack of transparency by LCC only serves to fuel speculation and spread alarm and despondency over the future of our beautiful city.
Like the 'Black Knight' in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, senior LCC officers refuse to give an inch while making empty statements about public consultation. We have to wonder when, if ever, the people of Lancaster will be given a voice in the future of our city while the current senior executives of Lancaster City council remain where they are.
As a first step in making a complaint to the Information Commissioner, following LCC's inadequate response to our FOI request, we have told them that we are not happy with their response. We have also requested clarification of LCC's position regarding consultation with the local community.