Town council's sale of land "may have been unlawful", says Audit Commission

The sale of land and buildings by Uttoxeter Town Council may have been unlawful, a report by the Audit Commission has suggested.

In its public interest report into the sale of land next to Uttoxeter’s town hall in 2008/09, the watchdog argued that:

• The council did not do enough to market the land, which was sold for £125,000
• There was at least one higher potential offer which the council did not pursue
• The council “did not take sufficient legal advice, and it did not demonstrate how it properly considered and acted on what advice it did receive”.

According to the report, the way in which the council reached its decisions was symptomatic of a poor underlying governance framework.

Report author Jackie Bellard raised concerns about a range of issues, including the clarity of roles of councillors, the clerk and other staff, and about how open-minded the decision-making had been.

Bellard said: “I consider the decision to sell the land to be so poorly supported that the sale itself may be unlawful. I do not believe the council took into account all the necessary information when reaching its decision and in my view such a decision could be found to be in breach of the ‘reasonableness’ test which underpins local government law.”

However, she added that she had decided not to apply to the courts to seek a declaration that the sale of the land was unlawful.

Bellard justified this decision on the basis that the cost of taking action would be disproportionate to the sums involved, any declaration would have little practical effect in relation to the sale of the land, and an action would not serve the best interests of the taxpayer.

She made several recommendations in the report about how the council could improve its governance structures.

Uttoxeter’s mayor, David Brooks, mounted a robust defence of the town council’s handling of the land, which was once the site of a cattle market.

Brooks, who stressed he could not speak on behalf of the town council, said the council had originally purchased the site because it was worried it would become part of a developer’s land bank.

He added that the competing offer had been rejected as – unlike the bid from the company that bought the site – it did not meet the town’s masterplan.

“There may have been parts of this that we could have done differently, but it was always our understanding that this was purely to help facilitate the regeneration of the former cattle market,” Brooks said, insisting that the town council had received adequate legal advice. The capital sum arising out of the sale would be put towards the town hall.

“The Audit Commission report has completely missed the whole point of the sale of the land,” he claimed.