Questions over park funding

PEMBROKESHIRE council is facing questions over a £1.9m investment it made into the Bluestone holiday village.

The investment, which had been made over a decade ago, has since lost nearly all of its value and was made public for the first time at a meeting of the full council.

It emerged that the council gave the popular £110m holiday park near Narberth some £1.9m in secured loans soon after it opened in August 2008.

The loans helped fund the site’s extensive swimming complex, then called Waterworld and now known as the Blue Lagoon.

Part of the justification for the loan was that Bluestone would give the public year-round access to the swimming complex at a fair price.

However, the following year, 2009, the council exchanged its loans for an equity share in the company. Pembrokeshire’s

council meeting was told that the shares were now worth just £70,000.

The revelation was made by the council’s cabinet member for finance Alex Cormack at the meeting on May 11.

Cllr Cormack said the 2009 cabinet report was confidential, so he couldn’t say what was in it, but said he could tell members “what was not in it,” saying there was no clear justification for taking up the shares or for giving up the legal charge guaranteeing the loans and no evaluation of the pros and cons, or evaluation of a fair share price.

Members heard the value of the shares amounted to – at best – under £70,000, and had paid out £19,000 in dividends over the past five years.

“The council’s lost £1.8m of the £1.9m – roughly 95% – of the IPPG investment and the public’s lost the guaranteed right to use the Bluestone pool,” said Cllr Cormack.