Exclusive: Council to spend huge sum on leased Victorian property wrecked by squatters after another housing mess up
NN Journal has seen a confidential council report discussed yesterday about a grand Northampton home taken over by squatters that is set to cost the authority a huge sum
By Sarah Ward
West Northamptonshire Council had to evict squatters from a historic property it had been leasing for temporary accommodation and now faces a bill of more than half a million pounds to restore the property.
NN Journal has seen the report discussed by West Northamptonshire Council’s cabinet yesterday, highlighting another case of mismanagement by the former Northampton Borough Council (NBC) and its arms length housing association Northampton Partnership Homes. The fiasco has already cost taxpayers more than £120,000 in dead rent and is set to cost more than £500,000 to fix.
There are also concerns about plans by the authority to purchase the property from its mystery owner for a minimum of £800,000 without agreement on a purchase price before doing extensive works to the seven-bedroom house on Spencer Parade.
The mess comes just months after the scale of the problems within NPH became known, with millions wasted on large scale capital projects that did not come to fruition. The arms length organisation was declared to have ‘serious failings’ by the housing regulator and is in the process of being taken back in house by WNC which succeeded the former NBC in 2021.
What has happened?
NBC had taken out a six year lease in 2014 for the impressive home Spencer Parade and used it for temporary accommodation. The former council (which is infamous for losing a £10m loan given to the owners of Northampton Town Football Club) gave the un-named owner a £111,000 grant to do up the property, before leasing it from them at a cost of £24,000 per year.
It was managed by NPH but when the lease ended the authority continued to pay the rent, due to its housing department failing to tell the assets department of the lease.
The property then fell vacant and squatters got in, causing considerable damage. The authority secured a court order in January 2022 to remove the squatters and since then has paid the annual rent on the uninhabitable property.
The three-storey property dates to the late Georgian, early Victorian period of the 1830s and is on one of the most impressive streets in Northampton.
According to Rightmove it was last sold in 2014 for £360,000. This is the same year it was let to NBC.
What has been agreed?
At last night’s cabinet meeting the new Reform UK administration agreed to delegate authority to the assistant director of assets Simon Bowers, to procure contracts for the expensive repairs. It also agreed he would work together with the executive director of resources Martin Henry to take out a lease and/or purchase the freehold of the property.
The report says it could face legal action if it did not restore the property.
Details show the proposed new rent would also be hiked from £24,000 per year to £42,000 per year. The renovations would create six independent flats within the large house.
The authority says it is more cost effective to lease and even buy the property due to the high costs of nightly temporary accommodation. Several hundreds of residents are currently living in temporary accommodation after losing their homes.
After a challenge by opposition councillors, the cabinet, which is led by Mark Arnull, decided to bring the matter back to a future cabinet meeting for authorisation before lease and purchase are agreed.
At the meeting, concerns were raised that the authority had not agreed a sale price with the mystery owner before taxpayers’ money is spent on the property. The report says the owner does not want an immediate sale. A minimum sale price of £800,000 is being talked of.
By not agreeing a purchase price before sale, the authority is putting itself at risk that it could spend money upgrading the property for the owner to then sell it on the open market, or increase the asking price to the authority.
At the meeting the executive director for place Stuart Timmiss refused to name the owner saying that he did not think it was required to be put in the report.
‘Unusual lease’
The confidential report mentions an ‘unusual lease’ arrangement but does not go into detail. This unusual lease follows on from a complex lease arrangement made between NBC and the town’s football club for land at Sixfields, which led to a high court judicial review, after developer Cilldara challenged the agreed sale between the two parties in 2022.
Belgrave House, which was part of an expensive failed flats scheme and will now be part of the Greyfriars redevelopment, was also restricted by a complex lease arrangement, as was the Grosvenor House development. All these leases have ended up costing significant officer time and taxpayer expense to negotiate and unravel.
The new Reform administration
During their campaigning this Spring, Reform UK’s Northampton branch said if elected it would ‘improve scrutiny and hold officers and executives to account’. However the administration decided to discuss this matter, showing mismanagement by the previous Conservative administration, behind closed doors. The report says this is because if the sums being spent on the renovation are made public it could lead the property’s owner to increase the asking price.
The council’s media office asked NN Journal not to report this matter for several weeks until the deal has been completed. However we have decided that reporting the matter is in the public interest due to the significant sums of public money already wasted, the hefty costs that will be incurred to fix another NBC/NPH error and the concerns about who owns the building.
Despite calls from many quarters, the Reform administration has also refused to launch an investigation into what happened at NPH over the past decade.
The mismanagement of projects at the former university campus, Roof Gardens in Spring Boroughs and the failed Belgrave House scheme meant the housing association caused losses running into several millions. The government was highly critical of NPH in a report last year which found thousands of its housing stock was not up to decent homes standards and that vital safety checks had not been completed.
No response to questions
We have asked the authority a series of questions about who owns the building; why a maximum sale price has not been agreed before agreeing to commit funds to renovation and why the length of any new lease has not been detailed in the report. The authority has said it does not have a response to the questions, but issued the following statement:
“This kind of financial detail is provided to councillors confidentially for a reason – discussing it in an open forum can have significant negative impact on the council’s ability to negotiate the best value for taxpayers.
“Property deals can be complex and are not something we are willing to debate in public ahead of contracts being agreed between the council and other relevant stakeholders.
“Cabinet is appointed to provide the appropriate challenge while negotiations take place.”
More valuable reporting via NNJ of issues councillors are yet again trying to keep secret. Someone has to hold these people to account. Well done NNJ and so much for Reform's 'transparency!
It's another case of no-one being held to account for major failures. Where are they now? Probably in more senior positions!
Why aren't Reform pursuing those at fault?
Was there any criminal activity?
I still have no faith in local government!