Council ‘gambled’ £100m taxpayers’ money on failed solar farms
MORE than £100million of taxpayers’ money has allegedly gone missing after a council “gambled” it in a failed solar farm project.
Rob Gledhill, the leader of Thurrock council in Essex, resigned yesterday after the Government appointed a commissioner to take over the Conservative-run authority. It follows revelations that Thurrock borrowed hundreds of millions, including from other local councils, to invest in the solar farm scheme run by Liam Kavanagh, a financier with a personal private jet, fleet of supercars and country estate.
Over four years, his companies received £655million from Thurrock, in order to buy 53 sites across the UK. This includes a “top-up” of £138million that reportedly never reached the management company of the scheme, Toucan Energy Services.
Thurrock’s taxpayers stand to lose up to £200million after the farms were valued at substantially less than they would need to be for the council to recoup its money. The sum is roughly equivalent to the cost of all the council’s services for a year.
Mr Gledhill resigned, stating that “the buck stops with me”. Thurrock Conservatives appeared to direct blame at council officials, saying they “have become deeply concerned at the way investments have been made and handled by officers”.
An investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ) reported that Sean Clark, Thurrock’s finance director, travelled on numerous occasions to meet Mr Kavanagh in London at the five-star May Fair hotel.
The director of Toucan Energy Services told the BIJ that, despite the sums being invested in the project, no one from Thurrock Council ever visited the sites or requested performance data in relation to the top-up investment, which would have been required to properly value the sites.
A spokesman for Thurrock Council said: “We are treating this extremely seriously and have been working ... to understand how the situation has arisen”.
Mr Kavanagh has reportedly indicated that the £138million had been “properly recorded” on the balance sheet of his company TEH1, and it would be wrong to suggest the money had to be invested in the solar farms, ad that there were “no specific terms” as to how the funds could be used.