Are we being misled by council figure?

You reported on August 2 on the residential conversion in Keynsham being undertaken by the council’s controversial development company Aequus Developments Limited (ADL). The company’s chairman, Councillor Charles Gerrish, is quoted as saying that the project is a “winwin” because “the authority owned the Riverside building so it got a capital receipt when Aequus bought it”. Unfortunately what Councillor Gerrish fails to say is that the council bought the long leasehold interest in the building for £3.1m and sold it on to ADL for £1.6m. Any capital receipt from ADL would therefore have been used by the council to pay off part of the loan it took out to buy the building. To suggest that the council has netted £1.6m is somewhat misleading. This is not the first time a misleading quote from Councillor Gerrish has been reported. In January he was quoted as saying that ADL would be “building up to 60 apartments over council owned retail units in the city”. What is actually happening is that the flats referred to are being transferred to ADL from the B&NES Council commercial investment estate, having been previously let to a housing association. The money to purchase the flats is being lent to ADL by B&NES. As the 60 apartments are already in existence there is no need to expose the council to this financial risk because the commercial investment estate could have sold the properties into the private sector and arguably achieved a better price. The capital receipts could have been used to pay down historic debt thus producing risk free additional income. Are we being misled or does the ADL chairman not understand what is going on? Perhaps we should be comforted by his assurance that the ADL board has “a reasonable degree of expertise”. That’s all right then! David Stubbs Combe Down