Tag Archives: Place Scrutiny Commission

ARENA: BREAKING THE BANK?

IS THERE A BLACK HOLE IN THE WHITE ELEPHANT?

Bristol Arena - white elephant - Dru Marland

The budget for mayor “Uncle” George Ferguson’s major VANITY PROJECT and RE-ELECTION STRATEGY is spiralling dangerously out of control.

Despite efforts from the mayor to GAG councillors from revealing the financial shambles, we know that CANCELLATION of any on-site car parking and the LOSS of revenue has smashed a £10m-sized budget black hole into mayor’s £90m Arena project.

Meanwhile a council Scrutiny Committee in August UNCOVERED a further £4m worth of costs for the project, pushing the total budget up to at least £94m.

Now it’s been revealed that the owners of the land, the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA), are DEMANDING payment for their land, which the council had originally claimed would be a freebie. The HCA are believed to want around £4m for the land.

So just a year into the project and costs have been already pushed up by around NINE PER CENT to £98m before a shovel’s got anywhere near the site. The total FUNDING GAP for the project is now at least £18m and this will have to be met by council taxpayers and through cuts to services already being hammered by austerity.

Concerns have also been expressed about other aspects of Uncle George’s funding proposals. He claims £53m will come from the City Deal ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT FUND.

A complicated mechanism based on borrowing against any increased receipts from business rates in the TEMPLE QUARTER ENTERPRISE ZONE. At present there’s little sign of much growth in these receipts, which leaves Bristol council taxpayers, as lenders of the last resort, to pick up that tab too.

Uncle George claims a further £38m of funding will come from rental and operating income from the arena. Although this figure has been described to us as “VERY AMBITIOUS” and, again, any shortfall will have to be met by the council taxpayer.

Uncle George, however, remains wedded to his basketcase project, which was one of the few actual promises he made in his election campaign. Delivering an arena, regardless of cost, may also be the only chance this highly unpopular mayor has of getting RE-ELECTED.

So worried is Uncle George about these PRECARIOUS FINANCES being revealed, he got his useless new legal boss SANJAY “UNDER” PRASHAR to invent a so-called ‘BLANKET EXEMPT STATUS’ gag to stop anyone discussing them.

Uncle George now has also removed the responsibility for the arena from the council’s PLACE SCRUTINY COMMISSION who had been asking some tricky questions and given it to the friendlier OVERVIEW AND SCRUTINY COMMISSION.

The commission’s Labour Chair, STEVE PEARCE, has already been quoted as saying “I won’t be pushing the mayor too hard on this.”

Thanks Steve. Nice to know you’re looking after us so well.

CENSORED!!! MAYOR’S FERRY COMPANY QUESTIONS

At 2.00pm this afternoon a series of THIRTEEN questions from a member of the public about the bankruptcy of the BRISTOL FERRYBOAT COMPANY were sent out to relevant councillors and managers at Bristol City Council in advance of tomorrow’s PLACE Scrutiny Committee where they should have been answered by council managers IN PUBLIC.

Mayor GEORGE FERGUSON‘s conduct as a 42 per cent shareholder in the bankrupt company and Bristol City Council’s role in awarding the basketcase business a series of tenders and grants over many years with no questions asked were the theme of the questions.

At 5.30pm today, council transport boss, PETER “STUPID” MANN, a close ally of the mayor, informed the chair of the scrutiny committee he was pulling the questions.

MANN’s excuse was that some of the questions were the subject of Freedom of Information requests. MANN was supported in this blatant ACT OF CENSORSHIP by council lawyers.

Of course, there is NO LAW against a member of the public asking a local authority questions that are also the subject of a Freedom of Information request. Neither is there anything in the authority’s constitution to prevent a member of the public asking such questions.

MANN and the – as yet – unnamed council solicitor are TALKING BOLLOCKS and CENSORING embarrassing information with potentially criminal implications.

The censored questions are here: http://issuu.com/bristolnews/docs/place_qs?e=0/9833673

The issues raised include:

1) The successor companies were Phoenix Companies (which means the evidence suggests that directors just walked away from debts to buy back assets at a heavy discount – with one of the directors from Ferguson’s company simply moving to the next one to run it)

2) SIP 16 infringement (a need to follow a strict code of practice laid down in law for providing information to creditors in order to resurrect a company from most if not all the same assets of the one just gone bust) – we believe this process was not followed

3) Section 216 Offence – all creditors must be consulted about the intention for a successor company to be named almost identically to the collapsed one. Not followed as far as we are aware. The Bristol Post stories where it called the new company by EXACTLY THE SAME NAME show this clearly

4) A failure to re-tender the routes of the Bristol Ferry Boat company – it is an asset belonging to the council that was handed from one dead company to its successors like sweets to a small child. No attempt to allow competitive tendering. No effort to maximize profitability for the benefit of council taxpayers.

5) A mysterious and glaring omission of who or how all the staff salaries were paid at the Bristol Ferry Boat Company (which would be paying an unsecured creditor and no one else which is illegal). How do all staff salaries appear to be paid in liquidators report in December 12 signed by Jane Salvidge? Can someone explain?

6) Possibly trading fraudulently in the summer of ’12 when the Bristol Ferry Boat Company submitted a bid for passenger routes across the Harbour (they were hundreds of thousands of pounds in the red) yet would have to have submitted a Pre-Qualifying Questionnaire answer to BCC saying they were actually solvent. BCC holds the PQQ completed by George Ferguson’s Bristol FerryBoat Company – but for some reason is reluctant to share it.