By Andrew Peters
As highlighted in many national newspaper articles over the past 12 months, Spelthorne Council has been in the vanguard of a phalanx of local authori-ties borrowing to invest in property. The evidence of this strategy is plain to see with our own eyes in the form of the re-development of the Benwell House site at the top of Green Street.
The new leadership, concerned there was a lack of member involvement in the Council’s own devel-opment projects, instigated a scrutiny committee review which has just published its report. This report used the development of Benwell House (temporarily named Ceaser Court) as a prime ex-ample of all that was wrong with the previous lead-erships approach to investments. The report con-tains some stinging criticism of the former political leadership and council officials and is highly criti-cal of the way Ceaser Court Phase 1 was both cost-ed and built. The report highlights the almost total lack of any financial control, audit trail or member/public consultation. EXACTLY what previous articles in Sunbury Matters about this awful devel-opment alleged, has now been found to be true.
The report confirms: The purchase of Benwell House in Sunbury was approved in July 2017. The original cabinet paper, as well as approving the purchase, provided for the development a budget of £13,3M for the conversion of the office building to 41 flats and 14 other units. This was revised by a cabinet paper in September 2017 to a total of 69 flats in 2 blocks with a budget of £13.8M. In 2019 a further cabinet paper was submitted for a £18.9M spend for the current plan for almost 100 flats in 2 tall blocks.
The report is highly critical of the way the funding and number of flats ballooned, saying:
There is no audit trail of how changes to the design were authorised
Plans that increased the costs were formulated and implemented without formal approval of changes
There is no audit trail of why money allocated for building all developments has instead all been spent on an enlarged Phase 1
There was no financial appraisal for the whole development
Public consultation only took place on Phase 2 with no alternatives offered
In summary this development has proceeded with minimal member or public involvement and coun-cil officers were reluctant to identify who had made decisions. Incredibly there appears to have been no expectation at the time that any formal record of decisions should be retained.
This reluctance on the part of council officials is worrying. Despite the leadership changing and an apparent political will to review the current poli-cies we perceive huge organisational inertia within Spelthorne Council to any change of direction, not least from senior council officials and the many contractors employed to push these schemes through. As an example, the members of the De-velopment and Investment Group (the council offi-cials who operationally oversee the investments) initially refused access to their minutes by the scru-tiny working group and only relented after the direct intervention of the new leader.
As local residents we call on the new council lead-ership to:
Put in place immediately the programme board, training and procedures as described in the scrutiny committee report to ensure proper and robust oversight and direction of council officials
Set out a clear process for reviewing the pro-posed phase 2 of the Benwell House/Ceasar Court development as agreed at the Council meeting on 21st January, and detail what opportunity there will be for meaningful pub-lic involvement
Only this way can the Council remedy their serious faults in the redevelopment of Benwell House and assuage the very high level of concern and opposi-tion amongst residents in Lower Sunbury