Sites snub frustrates leader of city council

The Island Wharf office development could have given Hull City Council income of £500,000 a year and land next door – formerly owned by Associated British Ports – is earmarked for regeneration but the sites will now be put up for sale and are expected to raise about £3m for the Treasury.

Coun Carl Minns said his authority would not be able to find the money to buy the site, given the Government insists they meet market value, and said he was “disappointed” by the decision.

As revealed in the Yorkshire Post yesterday, the Government has decided that 15 of the soon-to-be-abolished development agency’s sites should be put up for sale, despite calls for the region to benefit from the assets. Coalfield sites are also being handed to the Homes and Communities Agency, a regeneration quango, and discussions are ongoing over what should happen to the rest of the portfolio of property.

Coun Minns, Liberal Democrat leader of the council, said: “I’m disappointed at the decision. What concerns me especially with the ABP land is that someone will buy it and land bank it [rather than developing it], and it doesn’t move the regeneration forwards.”

He said it “flies in the face” of Government policies for public bodies to jointly manage assets.

“This has been on the cards - it hasn’t come as a bolt from the blue,” he said. “Yorkshire Forward have made their views perfectly clear to us, but we think they’re wrong. We’ve been talking with them and Government over the past few weeks about that and that will continue.”

Campaigners are fighting for Ministers to allow the new Local Enterprise Partnerships to keep rent from Yorkshire Forward’s headquarters when the offices are let out to new tenants.