Council’s £32 Million Offshore Purchase of Bootle Strand to Come Under Scrutiny

Sefton Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee for Regeneration will be meeting at 5.00 pm on 31st January at Bootle Town Hall to put the Cabinet’s £32 million purchase of the Bootle Strand shopping complex under the microscope. 

The special Scrutiny meeting was agreed by the Council after a motion by Southport Lib Dem Leader Councillor John Pugh, who had protested about the secrecy in which the sale was decided and the failure of the Council to allow any consideration of the finances of the deal.

Lib Dem Councillors Iain Brodie Browne and Simon Shaw managed to use their audit powers to find out about the £660,000 bill which Sefton Council had paid to tax and property consultants and lawyers but there are still many questions outstanding about the deal which involved [urchasing an offshore company, thus exempting the Council from paying a ‘Stamp Duty’ tax on the purchase.

A number of Lib Dem, Independent and Conservative Councillors have expressed concern about the legality of the way that information about the shopping centre purchase, made nine months ago, has been withheld by the Council’s Cabinet. Sefton Council has a past record of serious incorrect legal decision. Eight years ago, the Labour and Conservative councillors would have unlawfully made the Council’s chief executive redundant has it not been for one Tory councillor preferring to attend a royal lunch appointment rather than going to a Cabinet meeting, leading to the Lib Dems winning a vote to get specialist legal advice.