Hard-up SLC loan £10m to Cheltenham council
Temporary deposit
STEPHEN BARK
South Lanarkshire Council have loaned £10m to help counterparts in England buy land for a cyber business park.
That’s despite reporting a deficit of £42m in their own budget in July.
The local authority handed the money to Cheltenham Borough Council – nearer Cardiff than South Lanarkshire – to help buy 45 hectares of land near the government’s intelligence centre GCHQ.
Bosses there have borrowed £40 million from Derby City Council, the Isle of Anglesey County Council, Powys County Council and Teesside Pension Fund to buy the land.
Only Teesside Pension Fund loaned more than South Lanarkshire.
The council insist the money was “not a loan”, rather a “temporary deposit of council money,” which they say is “the equivalent of a bank deposit”.
It is expected the money will be paid back, with interest, by December.
The council’s head of finance, Jackie Taylor, said: “It is not uncommon for councils to deposit funds with other local authorities through an established mechanism that offers a safe, short-term deposit facility.
“In July we deposited £10m with Cheltenham Council. The deposits will be repaid by December. The deposits will bring in interest for SLC as any deposit of funds would, and at interest rates which are higher than the Government Deposit facility.”
In July, SLC reported a budget gap of almost £42m which many feared would see the authority abandon its policy of no compulsory redundancies.
The subsequent 2020/2021 strategy and savings requirement report was called “sobering” by council leader John Ross, and anticipated a reduction in grant income and “described a budget gap of £41.5 million.”
Pay awards for teachers, kinship care, waste management and community participation, programmes like school breakfast clubs and holiday lunch clubs, and the rollout of Free at 3 were all feared to be affected.
Yet the council has handed £10m to Cheltenham Borough Council.
Lying next to GCHQ, the government’s first line of cyber security defence, the cyber park would take up a massive area next to Springbank and Fiddler’s Green.
Once developed, it will create new jobs and put the Gloucestershire town at the forefront of cyber security.
The scheme is a critical part of a larger 132-hectare plan for the west of Cheltenham which will become a new Garden Village community which the council says will be “built with the natural environment and sustainability at its heart.”