County Councillor Mark Goldsack Quotes

 

Assets and Procurement Committee – 28 November 2023

Agenda Item 6 – This Land – Publication of Shareholders Agreement

Click here for Source – Timestamp 47.25

Cllr Mark Goldsack

“Thank you Chair.  I really welcome the Shareholder’s Agreement, openness and being able to see this in a public meeting.  And I think it’s a real step in the right direction.  As part of the debate of this section I would encourage everyone involved with This Land to go further, and further disclosure.  There’s a lot of disinformation and misinformation in the public domain about the operation of This Land.  And that affects people’s judgement and people’s perception of the reality of the situation.  I have spoken to the Chair of This Land direct, and asked for better communication out to councils – parish councils, town councils and the like.  But I see this very much as a step in the right direction, and I would encourage all those involved – Tom and Michael etc. to really push for more information out there – factual information that does counter some of the disinformation that circulates out there.  Unfortunately, we live in an era (and I’ve used this phrase many times), but we live in an era of social media.  And on social media, noise wins over fact.  So we have to make sure that fact stands absolutely true out there.  So, thank you for bringing this.  I look forward to more.”

Perhaps Cllr Goldsack could start the ball rolling by providing just two examples of where in the public domain, or social media, anyone at all has circulated disinformation and misinformation about This Land, and in what way that information was incorrect.  Cllr Goldsack has a tenuous relationship with factual information, as evidenced by this item from Private Eye’s Rotten Boroughs column published on 3^rd March 2021, about an earlier meeting of Soham Town Council, which the Councillor attended.

Rotten Boroughs, 3 March 2021

Private Eye’s facts were correct in every particular.  This Land’s inability to make its loan interest payments to CCC on time, and the fact it was forced to sell land purchased with those loans just to stay afloat was acknowledged on page 22 of CCC’s own financial statements for the 2020/21 financial year:

“During 2019-20, This Land undertook a significant review and reset of its business plan necessitated by revised assumptions showing a deteriorating financial position. The company had experienced delays achieving planning permission and was concerned its original plan was unduly optimistic and by the future overage obligations it had to the Council. A revised plan was submitted to the Council’s Commercial and Investment Committee in April 2020, with the Committee agreeing, for the Council’s part, to a number of updates and variations arising from the updated approach. Amongst the revisions was a commercial decision by This Land to dispose of a number of assets: refocusing on those of an optimum size and position for the company. By 31st March 2021, five disposals had been made and further disposals were completed during 2021-22. The sales have progressed in a relatively buoyant housing market, thus allowing the company to maximise returns and select the best timing and circumstances for individual sales. The proceeds from these disposals have put the cash flow of the company into a position where less borrowing has been needed from the Council than previously anticipated during 2020-21.

Other significant revisions within the 2020 business plan included a reduction in the Council’s future entitlement to planning overage uplifts from This Land, an increase in the permitted levels of lending to the company in principle (although detailed approval of draw down requests are required to access this and actual lending is currently below the level authorised in 2017) and adding land promotion as a further area of business activity for the company. Adoption of the revised business plan enabled the Council to advance loan amounts that had previously been on hold and in turn This Land could ensure it was up-to-date with previously delayed interest payments back to the Council.”

How transparent is This Land?

If Councillor Goldsack is keen to show transparency, perhaps he could comment on the following.

This Land’s Shareholder Agreement, which is now published, contains a section on Freedom of Information

In fact, requests for information about This Land do not have to go via the County Council.  Since it is a publicly owned company under Section 6 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, anyone can address FOI requests directly to This Land Ltd, rendering section 11 of the Shareholder Agreement redundant.

In all seven of This Land’s audited accounts published to date on Companies House, a material proportion of its administrative expenses was omitted from the corresponding note to the accounts.  In total, that lack of transparency comes to £8.98m, 46% of its total administrative expenses over seven years - and the equivalent of 23.4% of This Land’s comprehensive losses so far.  

By any measure, those omissions are material.  The unsystematic way in which a large proportion of This Land’s administrative expenses (but no other item of account) has been omitted from the notes to its own audited and published accounts breaches the disclosure requirements set out in Financial Reporting Standard 102 on financial statements (FRS 102), in particular, sections 2.4-2.7, section 8 and sections 2.10 and 2.11.

The missing categories and their amounts have been repeatedly requested by a local elector under s26 of the Local Audit & Accountability Act during the statutory inspection period of Cambridgeshire County Council’s own draft financial statements.  Each year the request has been denied.  

Since 2017/18, This Land’s accounts have been consolidated with the County Council’s own accounts, to form group accounts.  The group accounts form part of the local auditor’s audit.  Since 2018/19 the authority’s local auditor has been EY.  It follows that the audit extends to This Land Ltd’s own accounting records, and therefore that all This Land’s “books, deeds, contracts, bills, vouchers, receipts and other documents relating to those records”, as well as the accounting records themselves also come within the scope of statutory inspections of the County Council’s draft accounts. 

Perhaps Cllr Goldsack could lead by example in the interests of transparency and the public interest, and insist that Cambridgeshire CC stop denying the public their statutory inspection rights, and instead provide the missing details requested last August, including copies of the supplier invoices or other documents that make up the £1.46m worth of omitted administrative expenses in the notes to This Land’s 2022/23 accounts.  

Unless and until that information is provided, the public has no idea whether the undisclosed expenses were consultancy fees, backhanders, or any other inappropriate payments.  This Land and its auditors’ (RSM UK Audit LLP) refusal to comply with FRC 102, EY’s failure to demonstrate professional scepticism and to investigate or even comment, and the authority’s stubborn refusal to comply with its statutory obligations to the public together create what lawyers call “a plausible suspicion of wrongdoing" in respect of those undisclosed administrative expenses.