Doncaster Sheffield Airport: 'No legal basis' response issued to Reform's 'conflict of interest' motion
Part of a Reform motion set to determine the future of Doncaster Sheffield Airport next week has “no legal basis”, officers have said.
City of Doncaster Council (CDC) is seeking to reopen the airport via a council-owned company called FlyDoncaster. Council chief executive Damian Allen and senior officers Debbie Hogg and Christian Foster are listed directors of FlyDoncaster.
An extraordinary meeting is to take place on Monday where Reform and Conservative councillors want to rescind a previously-agreed £57m loan facility to help fund the DSA reopening - a move Labour has claimed would “kill” the project.
The decision was approved in November but opposition councillors now say they had “materially incomplete information” on which to make a decision at the time. A copy of the airport lease was leaked in January and revealed a series of controversial clauses councillors had previously been unaware of.
In addition to rescinding the lease, the motion put forward by Reform group leader Craig Ward has three other resolutions. Two relate to recommendations that new reviews are conducted by council committees, with the last calling for an “independent officer for any statutory report”.
The motion states that should it result in reports into either potential financial problems or legal issues being required, “any such report shall be prepared by an officer with no conflict of interest in the matters to which it relates”.
But a report written by officers in advance of the meeting says the recommendation “has no legal basis”. It lists Ms Hogg, executive director of corporate resources, finance director Faye Tyas and strategic programme lead Mr Foster as the “report author and contributors”.
It said preparing such financial reports are statutory duties on relevant officers, in this case namely the S151 officer Ms Tyas and monitoring officer Scott Fawcus, “and neither full council, the executive or other officer may instruct the Monitoring Officer or S151 Officer how that duty should be utilised or place a caveat or restriction upon it”.
It said: “[It] has no legal basis and it is not within the power of council to direct how the council’s statutory officers carry out their roles.”
A further motion about Mr Allen that Reform had sought to include in Monday’s meeting has previously been rejected on the grounds it was “defamatory”.
Auditors have previously raised concerns about the governance arrangements for FlyDoncaster, with recommendations made that there should be a separation of governance between it and the council.
A report by Grant Thornton to the council’s audit committee published last week gave a ‘red’ rating – signalling concerns about ‘significant weaknesses in arrangements’ – in regards to both the governance arrangements for FlyDoncaster and the broader financial case for the airport reopening project.
The council said in November it had decided that “the chief executive and executive director of resources should maintain the tight control and be as close to the decision making as possible” by remaining as company directors. It said the position will be “amended at the earliest opportunity, anticipated once the initial reopening risks have passed”.