Exclusive: Ministers halt £14m deal vital for Barnsley’s revival

The Yorkshire Post can reveal the soon-to-be-abolished regional development agency had proposed handing over four crucial sites in Barnsley, including the Metropolitan Centre, May Day Green and former Carpetworld site – which hold the key to a major revamp of the town centre – to the local authority, payment being deferred.

But after talks with the Treasury, the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), which is deciding what should happen to the agency’s assets as it is wound down, has decided this would “not be appropriate” because of the need to tackle the national deficit. Ministers say councils must pay market value for any assets up front, rather than delaying until they are developed and can be sold for more.

Now the council is seeking urgent talks with Ministers to establish whether it can raise the money to buy the sites, allowing the town’s flagship £180m Markets Project of shops, cinema, apartments and market to go ahead, or whether they will be passed over to the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA), which could cause delays. Yorkshire Forward had also suggested the sites could be transferred to a publicly owned trust.

Council leader Steve Houghton said: “We’re disappointed because it makes bringing the scheme forward a lot harder. We should be on site with the scheme next summer if we get the go-ahead, but there would be a delay if it goes to the HCA.”

After considering Yorkshire Forward’s plan for what should happen to the 80 buildings and pieces of land it owns or has an interest in, Ministers have also decided that the HCA should be handed control of the region’s coalfield sites, several of which Yorkshire Forward had proposed putting into trusts or selling off.

The agency is a quango set up by the previous Government to fund affordable housing, bring land back into productive use and support regeneration schemes. It has a portfolio of more than 20 coalfield sites in South Yorkshire, some of which are valued at more than £2m and which have huge potential for regeneration as housing or business parks. They include Dinnington, Smithywood, Askern, Bentley, Broadsworth and Carr Lodge Farm at Loversall, Doncaster.

A Government source said: “We agreed this with Yorkshire Forward and they were content with the plans. They may have had other options but we went to them and said we want to hand them all to the HCA, and they agreed with that approach.”

Politicians in the region have been fighting for as many assets as possible to go to councils but the decisions emerging so far will raise concerns over whether that will now happen. Although Yorkshire Forward has refused to publish its recommendations for what to do with each asset, the Yorkshire Post has learned it suggested nearly half should be transferred into trusts, eight should go to central Government, 16 to the HCA and the four in Barnsley to be given to councils with payment deferred.

Another 15 sites, valued at a combined £15m, have been proposed for sale, including Island Wharf in Hull, land at Rockingham in Barnsley, St Peter’s Building in Huddersfield and the ESS site at Burn Airfield in Selby.

BIS officials are expected to announce soon which they are allowing to be sold. A BIS statement said deferring payment was not feasible “within the constraints imposed by the current fiscal climate”.