| Topic: | Re:Reply | |
| Posted by: | Simon Hayes | |
| Date/Time: | 11/06/26 19:00:00 |
| You haven’t quite got things correct Gordon. The council did take out a loan to fund Broadway Living, a whopping £400m sanctioned by Julian Bell when he was leader in 2020. This was four years after the Brexit referendum. Broadway Living never made any money. It was sucking huge tranches of money from the council accounts to cover all its losses in the early days. The ambitious plan - devised by those megaminds Bell and Peter Mason - was to knock down Perceval House and build huge ugly towers of tiny flats on the site (with no outdoor space provision). That hit the buffers with planning. Then the Gurnell site was earmarked as part of the BL portfolio but that was rejected by the planning committee, despite it being dominated by Labour councillors. Mainly because it was an inappropriate use of Metropolitan Open Land but also because the proposed development was simply the wrong option. Those of us who have been following this for years were well aware of the risky exposure for Ealing taxpayers. It’s still not clear how these losses will be covered, and you can pretty much bet it will be a lot more than the £5.5m being quoted. Henry Construction lost the council double that amount according to the unlamented Shital Manro, lately cabinet member for housing. Broadway Living was set up in early 2014. It wasn’t necessary as the council was perfectly able to build social housing as it and other local authorities had done for years. There are still councils building excellent housing elsewhere in the country - Norwich springs to mind - but Bell and Mason clearly had their heads turned by all those jollies to Cannes where they were wined and dined by various developers. This isn’t about Labour or Conservatives or Monster Raving Loonies. It’s about councils leaders with limited experience thinking there was easy money to be made from gambling on the housing market. That’s not their role. It’s just a local authority version of casino banking, and remember how badly that turned out. Here’s an article for you to read: https://ealingmatters.org.uk/ealing-council-to-borrow-400-million-to-finance-broadway-living-what-could-possibly-go-wrong/ |