The OCG
This third and final part of the former Accles and Pollock lagoon site shows how money in the modern age drives bent planning applications turning acid bath lakes into an ambulance base. It again shows how private land, left abandoned and derelict is suddenly brought “back into use” through the public purse , and not by the scum who left it in that state. The politicians who enable this, principally in this case Andy Street’s West Midlands Combined Authority are very much a part of the problem and complicit in allowing tax dodging fake companies to gain at the tax payers loss.
Part 1 of the story concerns the former Accles and Pollack history of waste disposal.
Part 2 describes the Mintworth legacy of foundry sand infilling, a mound to rival their other two abandoned and directionless over tipped sandcastle sites at Coneygree and The Former Duport’s Tip.
The “Cleeve Investments” scam land banking company.
As a reminder, the two principle planning applications with the infilling of the lagoon with unspecified “inert materials” were
DC/04/42934 Infill of lagoon with inert material.
And DC/10/52117 Variation of condition 18 of planning permission DC/04/42934 (Infill of lagoon with inert materials) to allow for the temporary raising of the approved levels so that on the land additional fill can be placed to surcharge the infill material to achieve sufficient bearing capacity.
As with the dodgy W H keys site in West Bromwich, Bache Treharne were involved yet again with selling this crap on.
It is interesting to note that in correspondence form B submitted with the 2004 application, the owners of the site are listed as “CLEEVE INVESTMENTS LIMITED”– a company incorporated in Jersey and the address appears as such. But who exactly were their directors?
What is not clear to me at this time is how the process of sale was handled, but land registry documents show that Cleeve Investments Limited officially owned the freehold interest in the site from 10/9/2003. The company address handling their activities is Gateley LLP located in Manchester.
The Jersey company were set up, obviously for the sole purpose of this transaction in January of the same year.
From land registry title WM642888
It is noted “(09.01.2015) The proprietor’s address for service has been changed.” There is no change of physical address filed at companies house however from Jersey to the UK in regard to Cleeve Investments Limited.
A list of lenders, who we will get to in a minute
As the operations by Mintworth at Coneygree and in the Duport’s Tip/Rattlechain area were coming to an end, another Jersey registered company called “Denver Limited” was set up. Please note the address of this company, as well as a certain same law firm who operate for Cleeve Investments Limited in the UK. This is obviously no fucking coincidence at work here.
A UK Cleeve Investments Limited however, company number 00171213 is registered with Companies House being dissolved on 3rd October 2023 but were based in North Somerset. In their accounts, there is no mention of where they are based until a point appears to be made in the 2016 accounts- noted before they started to tap for state aid.
“Domiciled in the UK”
The main players here were as follows. The age of 1920 is no doubt a red herring and a pick up transfer of an old company bought and given a new name.
Jesus, Mary, the wee Donkey and the Wise Men’s wrapping paper, what is the crack here? This is not the first time that an apparent clone company exists in the tax haven and another appears in the UK for matters of transferring derelict land into housing schemes.
It is not the first charge against them, as the land registry document shows, and the complex web of aliases, dissolved companies and Channel Island entities continue apace.
Does not say who the lenders were
6 (28.02.2011) Proprietor: PAUL ANDREW TAYLOR, DILYS TAYLOR, JOHN BRENDAN KERIN and CHRISTINA KERIN of 45 Anstruther Road, Birmingham B15 3NW.
7 (05.05.2009) By a Deed dated 19 February 2009 made between (1) Apollo Sports Holdings Limited (2) John Russell and Allan Cooper and (3) Pulver Limited the covenants contained in a Deed of Covenant dated 19 June 2003 made between (1) Cleeve Investments Limited and (2)Apollo Sports Holdings Limited were assigned.
“Pulver Limited” was dissolved on 23/4/2014. The main man here appears to be Paul Andrew Taylor- named on the lender list from 2018, but at Pulver being Chief Executive, secretary, and also consultant- what a talented man!
Another Pulver man on the lender list to Cleeve from 2018
I take it that the two other females on the list are spouses of the above?
Also on the file at Companies House is the 2018 charge involving Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council which can be read below. I wanted to know why this authority were involved in such affairs in another neighbouring borough involving private land?
Here is the document PDF confirming
At this point in time when this document was signed , 20th April 2018 and wikipedia is my friend, we see this swing Labour/Con authority was not under the control of The Walsall Penguin, Mike Bird, but the Willenhall Paedophile Sean Coughlan.
We also see that this legal document putting Walsall tax payers at financial risk was not even signed by any directors of the phantom Cleeve, but by yet another proxy in the form of Hawksford, who are surprise surprise registered at the same address in Jersey as “Cleeve Investments Limited”. Even this identity is not transparent with the names “Hawksford Director 1 Limited ” and “Hawksford Director 2 Limited”
The two signatories on this deed, Sian Huish and James Howe are easier to trace however appearing to flit back and forth between the UK and The Channel islands.
On their website, Hawksford describe themselves as
“Hawksford is an international provider of Corporate, Private Client and Fund services. We enable our clients to realise potential and maximise opportunities. We deliver value for our clients by anticipating their needs and thinking beyond tomorrow.”
I bet they do, and this may all be legal, but it is I am afraid all that is wrong with this world, morally bankrupt and something the super rich are able to do to hide their money whilst not paying their way.
I decided to tap WMBC to see what their story was in relation to this dodgy deal and the registered charge, not to be confused with the sex offenders register charge of which the former online kiddy fiddler leader is now no doubt on. 😛 😛
“On 20th April 2018, your council gave the following charge code
0017 1213 0002 for private land held by a Jersey Registered company “Cleeve Investments Limited” in Sandwell- “Land on the north side of shidas lane, oldbury and registered at the land registry under title numbers WM642888 and WM688412.”
https://find-and-update.company-informat…
This company however were also registered in the UK as CLEEVE INVESTMENTS LIMITED Company number 00171213 and were dissolved on 3rd October 2023.
(i) please provide the grant agreement between the council and this private company and the value of the loan mentioned in the MR01 form. (This is the one referred to in the charge below).
(ii) At what level within the council, by whose authority and at what meeting was this loan agreed and validated- please provide details.
(iii) What was Walsall council’s interest in this private land in another borough and why was the loan made using tax payers money?
Walsall came back with some surprising information , which drops others further into the frame as to what was going on with our money being used for monopoly speculation.
(i) “Please note this wasn’t a loan, it was a grant award of £116,719 from the Black Country Local Enterprise Partnership (“BC LEP”) through a competitive application to Stoford Properties Ltd. As the BC LEP’s Accountable Body Walsall Council entered into a grant agreement with Stoford Properties and Cleeve Investments Ltd. Please note Cleeve
Investments Ltd were included as a signatory to this agreement as they provided the underwriting for the grant through a 1st legal charge on land at WM642888 and WM688412.
In summary, Stoford was the Grantee, First legal charge was negotiated
with Cleeve Investments Ltd,The project site land is the same land over
which we had a legal charge, and we gave the grant to Stoford to carry out
Site Investigation on Cleeve Investments Limited land.”
As far as I am concerned, this is a matter of pure semantics here, “grant”, “legal charge” “loan” all the same, not their money but ours to give out, but not it seems paid back. If Stoford wanted to pursue this matter, on behalf of their highly dubious client then they should have provided the funds themselves.
(ii) As per above this was a grant award made by the BC LEP and authorised by the Black Country Joint Committee, see attached minutes
https://go.walsall.gov.uk/sites/default/…
and
https://go.walsall.gov.uk/sites/default/…”
The second link provided here is a dead one as you will see, but I have found this, see further below.
The first one provides some very interesting information about the players making decisions at the BC LEP- a purely unelected quango, just as the former Black Country Development Corporation had been- and there is little doubt that this is just the bastard son of that corrupt organisation.
We see here that three Labour councillors , Eling from Sandwell, paedo from Walsall, and a sub , Bilson from Wolverhampton had voting rights. Also here are several senior officers, including the disgraced former Sandwell CEO Jan Britton.
We learn that this approval had been delayed because of Stoford’s unwillingness to put up their own money if things went tits up and they had to pay back the “grant”.
This also confirms what I had already discovered from an earlier source where the also disgraced Nick Bubalo of SMBC, (involved in the sale of several pieces of land in the borough below price made to a former councillor’s son), had presented a report in the time frame specified.
“The Black Country Executive Joint Committee” of key decisions show that approval was given for funding of a scheme in at least 2015, and subsequently amended in 2019 with the entity known as “Stoford Properties Limited”- who are again not the owners of this site.
I am afraid that such “commercially sensitive information” to me smacks of covering up a bent deal, and we have also seen this with the Lion Farm Fields situation not a million miles away.
At minute 20, we learn that a delegated decision was made in respect of this loan, by therefore not even an elected person, namely Simon Neilson of Walsall Council. Neilson had been at Essex before Walsall and has since moved on again.
The 2019 minutes show that voting members were now Zada from Dudley, Khatun from Sandwell as a sub, Walsall penguin, now leader of the council again, and Bilson as sub from Wolvo.
At Decision 19/006 we see Alison knight of Sandwell council apparently now acting as an agent for Stoford, and therefore the owners of the site to back more funding for locating mine shafts and remediation works. I thought HER job was to work for Sandwell council taxpayers, not fucking private land owners! Knight is not a medical doctor but has a PhD in education.
Again this is confirmed in the source below.
(iii) “Walsall Council managed Black Country wide grant funds on behalf of the BC LEP which is why their interest was outside of Walsall’s borough and part of Sandwell’s borough. Walsall Council’s interest in this private land was in the form of a first legal charge to protect grants funds awarded the grantee should they not deliver their contractual obligations.”
In terms of the site itself, the journey of the abandoned site continues via Google imagery from above.
By 2013, it was visibly starting to spring up greenery between the industrial units on the estate, just as had happened at the Former Duport’s Tip, save for the tatter operation for metal , and the Coneygree site in Tipton.
Shidas Lagoon Google Earth 6/2013
This appeared to continue with all trace of the former lagoon now gone, except the former deep water signs on the perimeter of the site.
Shidas Lagoon Google Earth 4/2016
Shidas Lagoon Google Earth 3/2017
For some unknown reason, but now perhaps we know why given the Sandwell officers and councillors involved with the decision making process, this privately owned site was being touted by Sandwell council itself around this time via a “think Sandwell” moniker. I would again ask WHY? What business is it of the tax payer funded authority to promote privately owned land that has never belonged to Sandwell Council, and worse registered and owned by a highly dubious “company” based in a tax haven? This stinks Sandwell! See link below.
Why are the council asking for interested parties to contact them?
Shidas Lagoon Google Earth 4/2018
Shidas Lagoon Google Earth 5/2019
Further to this, it appears that Street’s WMCA gave permission and sanction to this approval, with Councillor Mike Bird, leader of Walsall MBC at this meeting, (and Cllr Sleigh from Solihull in the chair). Should he and Walsall council be involved for anything related to this scheme when they were a key lender in getting it off the ground or to fledge if you’ll excuse the avian Walsall connection pun?
Agenda for Investment Board on Monday 11th November 2019, 10.00 am :WMCA
Minute 70 states the following, and at this point there was not even an agreement as to what this would even fund, FFS!
Why were “Cleeve Investments limited” not funding any remediation of their owned site? Not only do we not have an answer to this question from this closed shop political actor meeting, but also the land banking going on here is also covered up by the means stated below.
Furthermore, perhaps we could have some clear investigation as to who “Cleeve Investments Limited” were/are and who their directors were/are in both the UK and Jersey, if they are of “reputable quality” which Street claimed was a necessity at the Ask Andy event when I questioned him about such deals for the land remediation fund and why it appears that tax payer cash was being used to fund their development site? WHY DID THEY NOT PAY FOR THIS THEMSELVES FROM THE JERSEY BOLTHOLE?
What Andy Said in 2017
“Well, definitely polluted land is perhaps the important part of this. It’s my assumption of what you’re talking about here is the land remediation fund- which is designed specifically to deal with heavily polluted land, and again that is something that I am a strong believer in , that we have to bring that land back into use so that’s my guess what that is about.
Now any allocation of funding from that fund, we’ve been very clear; we’ve set the criteria for how it will be judged so no-one can say afterwards about the combined authority “you’ve inappropriately spent this.”
..and so any application would have to be measured against all of those criteria to find suitable value for money, and actually to know that the developer is of reputable quality.”
On this matter I put in the following to the WMCA via an FOI request.
“Dear West Midlands Combined Authority,
Land registry documents for titles WM642888 Land lying to the North side of Shidas Lane Oldbury and WM688412 show that this site is owned and has been since 10/9/2003 by a firm known as “Cleeve Investments Limited” registered in Jersey on 17/1/2003. This site was a former historic landfill site containing an infilled former Accles and Pollock acid waste lagoon, with “inert materials”, to which no one appears to know of what type- least of all in any planning applications associated with the site.
I refer to the following link
Agenda for Investment Board on Monday 11th November 2019, 10.00 am :WMCA
https://governance.wmca.org.uk/ieListDoc…
At minute 70.
Proposed Investment at Shidas Lane, Oldbury (Stoford Properties Ltd.) it is stated that “West Midlands Development Capital presented a report that sought grant funding from the WMCA’s Brownfield Land Property Development Fund to fund remediate the ground conditions at the property to deliver either a 115,000 square foot industrial unit (Option A) or, a 55,000 square foot purpose built Ambulance Hub (Option B); the scheme which would be delivered would be dependent on progress made with the pre-let of the Ambulance Hub and if not success, then the industrial unit would be built speculatively.
Resolved: That a maximum allocation of grant funding as set out in the report from the Brownfield Land and Property Development Fund to fund remediation costs at Shidas Lagoon, Rounds Green Road, Oldbury to deliver the development at the site, as referred to above, subject to the conditions detailed in the report be approved.”
(i)Please supply this report presented at this meeting in full.
(ii) Disclose how much public money from the remediation fund was approved for this Jersey owned site, (noting WMCA Mayor Andy Street’s previous outspoken comments concerning funding for tax haven registered companies).
(iii) Disclose if “Cleeve Investments Limited” were involved in anyway with this application.
(iv)Please provide the application for funding for this site, from WMCA’s Brownfield Land & Property Development Fund.
(v)Please provide the WMCA’s approved assurance framework for this type of funding.”
The WMCA originally refused to answer the request on parts 1 and 4 spouting rubbish exemptions about commercial confidentiality.
They did however answer question (ii) “The maximum grant allocation is £3.45m. Development is subject to monitoring by independent quantity surveyors, and subject to clawback on non-delivery and excess profit.”
and for (iii) “Cleeve Investments Limited were not involved in the application for funding. The application was from Stoford Properties Ltd.”
I will look at this surrogate further in this post.
For part (v) Grant funding is assessed through the WMCA Single Commissioning Framework.
“Details can be found at: https://www.wmca.org.uk/what-we-do/housing-land/singlecommissioning-framework/
Funding must be approved by the WMCA Investment Board who report to the full
WMCA Board.”
This is a dead link and hardly gives much assurance that this is above board if you’ll excuse the pun. Quite frankly, and board that consists of political figures making such decisions is bent to start with.
I obviously contested the refusal of the key information, but the WMCA would not budge and failed to conduct an internal review, at which point I contacted the ICO.
The ICO Decision notice below gave WMCA 10 days to conduct a review, which they also failed to do!
They appear to be a failed authority as evidenced by other requests made and not answered on the What Do They Know website- again hardly the candour and pretence of Andy Street’s persona about being open and transparent about matters of funding.
When they eventually responded, it was another pile of waffle hiding figures and private meetings with select individuals which is corruption in essence as far as I am concerned. This is a body handling public money, and yet private actors can claim this money for their schemes in some dragons den type scenario which is fully out of the public gaze, and more likely decided down the lodge with a funny handshake. It’s just a question of Who’s the caddy or “H”. 😆
I was however given the report presented to the Investment Board on
Monday 11th November 2019. which can be read HERE, although there were key financial redactions within this.
Most notably however it is revealed that this report recommended to “Approve a maximum grant of £3.45m to fund the remediation costs at the property in order to deliver the Development.”
GROUND CONDITIONS
There are some very interesting observations in this, notably the absolute bullshit infilling operation conducted by Mintworth, which is of course little surprise given their track record of such, as well as their joke go to consultants on such matters, who are in my opinion, not a credible outfit to make such ludicrous claims of viability about unstable land. And yet of course, Sandwell council planners have been validating of their pointless end planning applications for the means of obtaining money for dumping waste into vacant holes for years- only to end up with “financially unviable” results. Duport’s Tip, Coneygree, Shidas Lane- What a bunch of either thick or crooked berks they were for doing so over a substantial period of time!
“….it has proved to be unsuitable for built development due to
untreated mineshafts, excess surcharge material on the site and general poor ground loading conditions requiring piled foundation solutions. The above issues rendering the
site financially unviable.”
A far cry from what was claimed when the infilling operations were approved by Sandwell planners.
Of course, the site owners Cleeve Investments Limited were fully complicit with this farce, and so why should their poor financial and private venture be bailed out with money from the public purse? This whole grant was applied for “to fund the viability gap caused by the high remediation costs on the Property.”
Stoford Properties- who are they and what is their relationship with Cleeve Investments?
Stoford Properties are introduced as “a well-known experienced local developer in re-generating 7 acres of vacant brownfield land in a well-located area of the West Midlands.”
This does not however explain the credentials of the Cleeve Investments owner who are on the charge.
“The Company (Stoford) have entered into a conditional contract with the current owners of the Property (Cleeve Investments limited( to purchase for c. £ REDACTED per acre which is considered low in the current market. This price reflects the issues on the site and also the time taken to get all the ground investigation to a level where a suitable structural and remediation strategy could be considered.”
In other words, this was a private deal between two companies, one that had perhaps very naively purchased shit land which was shit infilled and left totally useless at the end of it. This was their problem, and not one for anyone else to get involved in- certainly not using public money.
Stoford are basically there to bail out shit investors of land banking. The two options are a smokescreen. The first is a ruse, and it is quite clear that the ambulance base “Option B” is the one that is going to be pursued. It’s only a surprise to me that West Midlands Police were not a third option given the number of #bentcoppers in the Sandwell area.
A new base for the der ders
Not sure why they tried to blank pout “OVER THE HURDLE RATE”- just makes it seem even more unseemly!
The “forward funder” was obviously Walsall Council
There is then a piece of spunk trumpeting of Stoford, founded in 1996 ,and nothing on Cleeve Investments and their track record of who they are. However
“The Company have a conditional contract to acquire the site from the current landowner Cleeve Investments Ltd with exclusivity held.”
Detailed Sladen Associates report- wow that must have been a professional job LOL.
We finally learn here, and without mentioning skintworth, that the “inert material” filling this lagoon site was building site soil dross from across the region. I wonder from how many other Mintworth over-tipped locations? 😛
Obviously approval for this was given by those at the meeting on 11/11/2019, including Mike Bird of Walsall council who would be the lender. At the site itself, despite not knowing allegedly which option was to proceed, the following hoarding appeared advertising this land bearing the Stoford logo.
The planning application was a mere formality wave through without any scrutiny as to the former players involved in this site.
DC/20/65084 “Proposed three storey building for West Midlands Ambulance Service, including offices, call centre, storage, training, multi storey car park, boundary fencing with gates and access” ,
Shidas Lagoon Google Earth 3/2020
Shidas Lagoon Google Earth 4/2020
Shidas Lagoon Google Earth 4/2021
And so once again, the greened over patch began to become barren again.
Work noted to be taking place with tree felling on 2/4/2021
I Wrote to Andy Street in relation to this matter seeking answers that were not forthcoming in the FOI request and response to which I received this rather pathetic response from one of his agents and not the coward of a man himself.
‘In line with the decision by WMCA’s Investment Board in November 2019, the WMCA investment agreed for the land at Shidas Lane was provided to remediate the ground conditions so that the site could be used as a purpose-built ambulance hub or industrial unit. Work has since started on the development of the ambulance hub. Redevelopment of the site is in line with WMCA’s ‘brownfield first’ policy ensuring that sites like these are brought back into productive use, reducing the loss of greenfield land. The application for funding, from WMCA’s Brownfield Land & Property Development Fund, was submitted and processed in line with WMCA’s approved assurance framework. All planning matters were dealt with by Sandwell Council.”
Sandwell council, whom I copied into the email and response had this to say via then leader Ragbir Singh
….Sandwell are unable to comment further as the issue of funding the reclamation was not directly a Council matter.
The Council, as local planning authority, did receive an application on behalf of West Midlands Ambulance Service for the construction of a new building near to the junction of Shidas Lane with Rounds Green Road. As part of this process, amongst the many supporting documents accompanying the application, the applicants submitted a site contamination investigation and a ground bearing structure report. This information was passed to other agencies as part of the usual consultation process which included the Council’s Public Health team and the Coal Authority. Ultimately, no objections were received and the application was approved on 31st March 2021.”
This response is a pure lie. Sandwell council were an integral part of the Black Country Local Enterprise Partnership. The fact that several individuals from Sandwell council, including the former then leader Steve Eling, (with voting rights), as well as former CEO Jan Britton were at the meeting which approved funding AT FUCKING SANDWELL COUNCIL HOUSE appears to have gone out of mind.
It was also around this time that certain political heavy weights within Sandwell Labour even put their faces to this.
Not enough “due diligence” into what grant schemes you are backing.
So there you have it, a buck passing exercise where politicians (of all sides, because let’s face it there is no difference), and their civil servants dole out tax payer cash to fund private enterprise of dodgy sand filled contaminated holes left abandoned by a well connected bust former industrial polluter. A web of alias companies then feast on the corpse and concoct a web of gaining money from the public purse under the pretence of “levelling up”. This is what you are voting for with Andy Street and his Combined Authority, and in that regard it is time that the WMCA was scrapped.
19/8/2021
Except with fucking sand
