Taxpayers stump up twice for key sites in region

Yorkshire’s cash-strapped councils have paid out more than £12m of local taxpayers’ money buying back key development sites for the region after they were seized by the Government when regional development agency Yorkshire Forward was wound up.

As local authorities across the region see their budgets squeezed for the third successive year, new figures reveal that Barnsley, Sheffield and York councils have between them spent £12,185,000 buying back key assets for the region which were seized by the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) in 2011.

All three development sites had previously been owned by Yorkshire Forward, before the quango was abolished following the election of the coalition.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Despite repeated requests, Ministers refused to transfer control of the land directly to the relevant local authorities. Instead they made the councils pay market rates for control of each asset, insisting the Treasury needed to recoup some of the liabilities it was left with after the regional development agencies were wound up.

But angry council leaders say the region has now effectively been forced to shell out twice for the same tracts of land, each of which had been purchased by Yorkshire Forward after being deemed vital to the future of the local area.

One of the development sites, the Metropolitan Centre at Barnsley Markets, cost Barnsley Council more than £10m to buy it back from the HCA last year.

Sheffield Council paid £1m for the Porter Brook site, while York paid £1.1m for the former ABB site at Holgate Park.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

York Council leader James Alexander said his authority had been left with no choice but to buy up the site, which is close to York station and seen as the most important development land in the city centre.

“The land is too strategically important to York to allow it to fall onto the open market,” Coun Alexander said. “But it does feel like taxpayers in York are paying twice for the same public asset.

“We’ve seen similar circumstances with flood defence schemes and with our park-and-ride sites, where the Government has come back on a previously-agreed deal and demanded more money. They are trying to shift the burden of deficit reduction onto local authorities, and it does not seem fair.”

Barnsley Council said it made “repeated” requests to Ministers to be handed control of the key Barnsley Market land in the city centre, but to no avail.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

It too felt it was left with little choice but to go ahead and purchase the site, which is part of a wider regeneration scheme.

“The acquisition of the former Yorkshire Forward assets represents a major piece of the jigsaw in securing the development of the £125m Marketplace Barnsley project,” the authority said.

“Every effort was made to secure these assets at nil value, but unfortunately despite repeated attempts the Government refused.”

The sums paid to the Government by the local authorities for the land tracts are particularly explosive at the present time owing to the unprecedented level of cuts to frontline services currently being undertaken.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Sheffield Council last week unveiled further cuts of £50m to its budget for the coming year, with rafts of libraries to be closed and the Don Valley stadium demolished.

The council’s director of development services, Les Sturch, insisted the authority had secured a good deal from the HCA for the £1m Porter Brook site, which is now being developed for the 
city’s new university technical college.

“The HCA are there to deliver regeneration, and we are 
working hand in hand with them over the sites in Sheffield,” he 
said.

“We agreed with them a fair price for the Porter Brook site which reflected the current depressed market conditions, and working with the university we are going to deliver a very important development.”

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Regional development agencies such as Yorkshire Forward were repeatedly criticised by the Conservatives when in Opposition 
for their sprawling portfolio of assets and excessive bureaucracy, and their abolition was one of 
the coalition Government’s first acts.

Housing Minister Mark Prisk said the agencies had bought land speculatively and left the Government with significant legal commitments on half-finished projects that still needed to be funded by the taxpayer.

“Thanks to their speculative land-banking, the regional 
development agencies have left behind £310m of liabilities and 
legal commitments,” Mr Prisk said.

“Yorkshire Forward alone has left the nation’s taxpayers a bill of £44m.

“We are using the receipts from sales (of assets) to pay off those liabilities and ensure the best deal for taxpayers.”