No Reasons Offered for Months of Sefton’s Bootle Strand Secrecy

Sefton Council last night offered no reason at all for keeping the details of its Bootle Strand purchase from the public and elected councillors for so long. The matter was finally brought before councillors in a public session after Lib Dem councillors had complained about the public being deliberately kept in the dark about the secret tax-free offshore purchase. The meeting was held almost exactly one year after the initial approaches in the purchase had been made.

The Council’s Executive Director Sarah Kemp, who gave a nearly hour long presentation on the purchase process to members of the Council’s Regeneration Scrutiny Committee, explained the legal reasons why secrecy had to be maintained throughout the negotiating period, which she said extended beyond the actual date of purchase as agreed post-contract discussions were being concluded for several months, which the Council felt involved commecially-sensitive information. These discussions, however, concluded in the autumn of 2017 yet over 50 councillors and the public of the Borough were subsequently deliberately kept in the dark about the costs and benefits of the purchase – and even the balance of reasons for making the purchase.

Ms Kemp also explained how the Council had bought the Strand’s parent company in Luxembourg, including the requirement to hire and pay Luxembourg-based professional directors for the intermediate company before the Strand was finally transferred to being a direct asset of the Council. She showed councillors slides showing that HMRC did not consider the manner in which the Strand had been bought by the Council including the Luxembourg company in itself meant that this activity was ‘tax avoidance’.

The Council is not running the Strand itself directly and realises that there is not the skill base within the Council to run such a large commercial operation. It is running the Strand through two companies, one to deal with the physical assets and one to deal with the commercial activities such as lettings, marketing etc. The Council believes that it will generate a good income for the Borough which it can use to combat the loss of income from the government.