Challenge to Temple Island decision process ultimately fails

A challenge to Bristol City Council’s controversial deal with Legal & General to develop land formerly earmarked for an arena has fizzled out.

Councillors at a special call-in sub-committee tasked with deciding whether the Temple Island decision-making process broke the authority’s own rules had three options available to them – take no further action, send it back to cabinet for reconsideration or full council for debate.

They voted against all of them and couldn’t even agree to adjourn the meeting to another day or go into exempt session to discuss commercially sensitive information.

Proceedings were delayed further when several of them nipped for a toilet break, the impasse was finally broken at the sixth attempt when Labour sub-committee chairman Don Alexander proposed a vote for the second time to take no further action, which passed when two councillors changed their minds.

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The way mayor Marvin Rees’s administration decided to team up with L&G was “called in” by opposition members, who argued their case that it breached the authority’s constitution during the three-hour hearing at City Hall on Thursday, February 27.

Bristol City Council and the asset management firm forged a “strategic partnership” last summer to build a hotel and conference centre, office blocks and 500 homes on the derelict site.

The authority will also spend up to £32m of public money in getting the land ready, including decontamination, before disposing of Temple Island to L&G as part of a 250-year lease agreement with the council.

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Read more: Opposition councillors mount challenge to Temple Island deal

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Lib Dem group leader Gary Hopkins, who led the call-in, told the meeting: “It has emerged that Legal & General has been having private discussions with the mayor for a number of years.

“L&G’s job is to look after its investors, not to deliver what the people of Bristol actually want. It would beggar belief to think we have got the better of the financial deal.

“It’s a hugely valuable piece of land in a prime location. The administration says the market was not interested in it and that nothing was ever going to happen there, but we all know that is not true.

“There was significant interest and there were plans with permission.”

He said the only way the council would have discovered how valuable the site was would have been to send it out to competitive tender, but it decided to dispose of the land to just one company.

“All those other companies with lots of money to invest in a site like this have not been included in the process,” Hopkins said.

“All we have is a memorandum of understanding, which has no legal binding at all.

“The mayor has to demonstrate that his decisions are in the best interests of the residents of Bristol, getting them the best deal and arrangements, not just ‘trust me’.

“It is impossible to demonstrate this when you have excluded all other competition and haven’t heard from potential bidders what they would pay for it and what they would do with it.”

Legal & General’s future vision for Temple Island. Image courtesy of Legal & General

Tony Carey, a Lib Dem councillor for Brislington East, said his main concern was the lack of transparency after it emerged in January L&G had been in talks with the council since 2015, far longer than previously known.

He said: “That makes us question whether L&G was in conversation with (former mayor) George Ferguson when he was in power, which I doubt, and then we have to question whether they were in talks with Marvin Rees before his election on the assumption that he would be elected and therefore he was never going to agree to the original plan for the island because his mind had already been set on an alternative.”

Fellow call-in councillor Graham Morris, a Tory representative for Stockwood, said: “I have concerns about the lack of procurement and transparency. It would be wonderful if we could have 40 per cent affordable housing on that site but there is no guarantee we will get anywhere near that.”

Hibaq Jama, a Labour councillor for Lawrence Hill, pressed officers and deputy mayor Craig Cheney on what safeguards were in place to ensure L&G delivered on its promises.

Former interim executive director of growth and regeneration Colin Molton replied: “L&G are obliged to spend several million pounds securing a planning consent at their risk.

“Once they get that, they would have to commit to the development within a period of time, otherwise the land would come back to us with the benefit of planning consent.

“There is a very good incentive for L&G to develop the site once they have planning consent. There is no concept of handing over a site to L&G.”

He said it was not true to say the land was “extremely valuable”.

“We did not have developers beating a path to our door, as demonstrated by the fact this site has lain vacant for very many years,” Molton said.

“We took the view that a disposal gave us the best chance of getting the best outcomes for the citizens of Bristol. The legal advice has been secured to make sure we are absolutely watertight in terms of that disposal.”

He said L&G was an “ideal partner” because of its proven track record with regeneration schemes in other cities.

Cheney called it “a great deal”, saying: “There will be a £900m economic uplift for Bristol – 1,600 jobs, 500 homes, £21m in business rates for the council’s bottom line, £1.6m in rental income to the council plus any money from council tax, about £600,000 a year.”

Labour group leader Marg Hickman said the call-in councillors had not proven any of their complaints and that scrutiny had examined the deal rigorously.

Claire Hiscott, a Tory councillor for Horfield, said it was clear discussions were taking place before the arena was scrapped, so the decision was not transparent or fair.

She said the council had not consulted properly and other options had not been explored publicly.

Hickman’s proposal to take no further action was voted down 4-3, with Jama siding with opposition councillors and the three other Labour members voting in favour.

Lib Dem councillor for Eastville Sultan Khan’s call for the issue to go to full council failed by the same margin before Jama suggested it should be sent back to cabinet, with the vote tied at 3-3 with one abstention. The deadlock broken by Alexander’s casting vote against.

Amid confusion and complaints the meeting was running over its allotted time and members had other commitments, further debate behind closed doors was talked down before two votes to adjourn the meeting until a future date both failed.

Finally, an exasperated Alexander put the option to take no further action to a second vote which this time succeeded by 5-2 when Green group leader Eleanor Combley and Jama switched in favour.

Explaining her decision after the meeting, Jama said: “I voted against taking no further action because I wanted to see further light shed on this deal for the sake of those with doubts. I also had further questions.

“I voted in favour of no further action the second time because upon seeing a Green councillor vote to take no further action on this deal, I believed my first concern was satisfied.

“As a Labour councillor in a Labour-held majority city, some may have the view that decisions in scrutiny are rammed through. This call-in demonstrates that there is no ramming through of votes.”

Combley said after the meeting: “Whether or not  you agree with the mayor’s decision about what to put on Temple Island, the call-in is supposed to be about matters of process, not an occasion for playing political games, and the applicants simply failed to make the technical case to support referring it back.”

Adam Postans is a local democracy reporter for Bristol

Main image courtesy of Legal & General

Read more: Challenge to Temple Island decision dismissed