The latest edition of Private Eye magazine (No 1579) features an article about
This Land Ltd, Cambridgeshire County Council’s wholly owned property
development company.+
It states that CCC counted as income a five-year government grant in year one
such that it changed a £173m shortfall into an £18m deficit. It would appear
from the article and the authority’s own draft financial statements that over the
last two years This Land has sold land to third party buyers that it did not own
outright, and without repaying the mortgages that represented the council’s
security against This Land defaulting on repayments.+
The Council therefore appears to have thrown away security totalling around
£76 million – substantially more than half the total value of its outstanding loans
to This Land (£113.9m).
I question how this can be lawful from either party’s point of view.
Furthermore, I question how any purchaser can legally take possession of
properties that are not free from encumbrance. One would expect the
purchasers’ solicitors to have carried out the proper searches prior to the sale
transaction going ahead.
It would therefore be helpful to have statements from the County Council’s
Chief Finance Officer, Mr Tom Kelly, and its Monitoring Officer, Ms Fiona
McMillan, explaining these transactions, commenting on their lawfulness, and
explaining if and how so much taxpayers’ money in the form of loan security
has been lost.
Yours faithfully,
Charles Warner
Soham
