What Lies Beneath Rattlechain Lagoon?

It never ceases to amaze as to how incompetent Works management at B69 Phosphorus Towers really were, in stark contrast to the claimed diligence of a responsible industrial neighbour.

The claim of training with professional firefighters for emergency events and scenarios  appears to have gone out of the window when they actually arose. I have taken a look at some of this in THIS POST. On this occasion they were instead watching a fire fighting video at Oldbury fire station instead of being present at their site itself!

Another farcical situation in this post demonstrates that whoever was in charge of sounding the alarm when the frequent fires occurred on this site was not competent at the job.

Just read this article from the 12th August 1995 Express and Star where the idiots thought that ringing for the fire brigade was better sent by fax. I rest my case.

With this shambles in operation at their main plant, did these yuppies really expect people to believe that their satellite hazardous waste dump down the road in Tividale was all hunky dory?

 

This is another post concerning the notorious Albright and Wilson WW2 artefacts produced by the Oldbury idiots for an anti-tank guerrilla warfare campaign that never transpired

I have looked extensively at the production, use and ultimate abandonment of these useless but highly dangerous white phosphorus filled half pint milk bottles. Over seven million of them were produced between 1940-42 at Oldbury and satellite factories , and then dispatched to Home Guard units around the country in wooden boxes of 24.

All came with clear instructions for use, and some later designs were made to be fired from a gun known as the Northover projector. Many were used for demonstrations and training, but by 1943 it was clear that they were useless for anything but gathering dust.

Numerous finds of these were found long after the war and still are being during building developments because fools on the home guard simply buried them. We do know however that the British State and AW conspired to dump these at Rattlechain lagoon under the cover of a “phosphorus waste” legend with the crap produced at Trinity Street.

This post deals with a one off incident find and is reported by The Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail dated 28th May 1965.

I’ve included the story and the pictures that go with it and a number of observations are apparent that suggest a similar pattern to other stories I have covered about AW bombs being discovered.

So not for the first time have I set out on a quest to track down dirty polluting bastards!

On this occasion, I had noticed a diesel iridescence covering a section of the River Tame through Sheepwash Nature Reserve emanating from the direction of Oldbury. There have been many issues with this river and pollution from connecting brooks and watercourses over several years. An incident in 2020 via the Brades Brook – a Severn Trent Water asset polluted the Tame via a third party. Reaction was slow to say the least and we had to get involved with physical interventions that you hope would be dealt with by people whose job it is to look for pollution and stop it. Sadly it is becoming ever more clear to me as the water grows more contaminated that the Environment Agency are not a competent authority to carry this out.

Without doubt the most frustrating part of these incidents is the total lack of response from The Environment Agency. You are invited to ring their “incident hotline number” on 0800 80 70 60 to report such pollution incidents, yet it is increasingly clear to me that this number is a massive Government fraud, as due to the unfit for purpose Common Incident Classification Scheme, which I have looked at HERE, these reports are just shut down if they are classed as being “category three”, without any attendance whatsoever from the EA. If you persist, they may attend, but don’t bank on it.

The pollution arose overnight without warning and I saw it early on. It persisted for 5 days without intervention, and in this time I made many calls to the emergency number as well as Severn Trent without any effort made by them to stop it in that time. I suspected again the source to be the Brades Brook, but STW could not reach their asset due to me not being able to give a postcode or what three words location. Wasteland does not have a postcode, and in terms of reporting a three metre location, I would have to have been in the fucking river itself.

And that dear reader is unfortunately what I had to do. Setting out at West Bromwich Street, I could see the River at its source from Oldbury running clear. At The Gower Branch canal where it runs under, I could see it polluted- this being upstream of the Brades Brook and the receptors at the nature reserve. Maybe it is the job of the professionals to therefore track it down further, but obviously this was too great a challenge for them, with me already doing their job.

On walking the course of the river, it was full of obstacles of manmade origin. More spare tyres than the Michelin man visiting Quick Fit. Assorted car parts and metal and vegetation. Probably not a very good location to get baptised.

Despite this, and walking over a mile in waders, I found the location of the pollution source of entry fairly easily. This was an outfall on the embankment, and on climbing up that, a large fairly recently built large sewer tunnel was visible. I would estimate 1990’s construction. You can half stand in it and it stretches into a void darkness on an upward gradient.

A facebook video of the find can be viewed below.

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Despite relaying this to EA and STW, they still wanted postcode and W3W! So back I went with my mate and some attempt at stopping the pollution with a boom and pads. We also got their bloody exact location, that they could not be bothered to get themselves. This was clock.swing.flip. 

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But I wasn’t satisfied with this, as I climbed up the embankment above the sewer tunnel, and arose on what I believe to be The Monks Tip, former licensed landfill site of the criminal waste dumping company Leigh – or in this case a subsidiary “Leigh Land Reclamation Limited”. They left fuck all “reclamation”, just wasteland, like that of much of the rest in this area being former “historic landfill sites”.

It was clear that I had reached the summit behind the Balaji Temple, itself built on the former Brades Hall Farm tip of equally dubious history.

The tunnel obviously goes under the car park in this location.

What is also clear, but not as yet if the two are linked, is a construction works ongoing at this Pankot Palace to build some type of dining hall. This was granted permission by Sandwell Council under auspices DC_23_68691. 

On site is A and H construction.

Waste arisings, (from the former historic landfill site) 😮 are being taken up hill and deposited on what is claimed to be land owned by the Temple, immediately behind where I arrived up the embankment. 😎 I do hope that landfill tax assessments have been made, and that this is not a way of ensuring off site disposal costs can be slashed whilst avoiding a waste management licence. 😮 Apparently, this is going to become a FAITH HILL.

I have already expressed my concerns about this sprawling site which is now far removed from being a “Temple”, but is a separatist “5 minute city” set aside for just one religion and for which Sandwell council grants permission for the block vote that comes with it with increasing ease. The planning policy unit even holds its events here to plot more destruction of the green space such as cum rags like the Dudley port Supplementary planning document. The mini town has its own food store and houses for “visiting priests” set aside in a private road. Just how this can be confirmed by SMBC, and why it should be the case that in a “housing crisis” where land is in alleged short supply and on “brownfield land” this can happen. It is beyond me, but then again, some people have preference over others don’t they?

All I will say is, that I will be keeping a very close eye on this site in the coming weeks to make sure that there are no more snake surprises, and may karma come to those who pollute our waterways.

As for Severn Trent, customer services claimed that I would get an update on what they found within 48 hours, as did a supervisor. That deadline has passed and I am still in the dark as to what if anything they did or traced. Would it be covered up if for some reason religion came into the picture? This is what this foul company had to say on the recent planning consultation as a statutory consultee. Oh dear, may be a bit embarrassing for them.

DC_23_68691-SEVERN_TRENT_WATER_COMMENTS-1302954

As for the EA, I have asked them to look at the waste tipping scenario going on at this site, as well as future monitoring of what is a DOOMED polluted River which is not acceptable. A very timely piece following an FOI request by GreenPeace has shown what I have been saying for a very long time about the EA and their responses to these incidents, as well as the useless Common incident classification scheme and its categories. It is therefore not just myself that is calling this out. 

“It found that the regulator has failed to meet its own response time targets for around three-quarters of England’s worst pollution incidents, which include major sewage, oil and slurry spills.”

Someone wrote this above one of their signs on the nature reserve, and it was not me. The sentiments however are fully supported by this website.

 

Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation that hinges on creating self-doubt.

The 1970’s were a truly terrifying time. Hairstyles and fashion were at their worst. Paedophile celebrities in the music and entertainment industry ran rampant rummaging in knickers as public information films they fronted with glee told children of some danger they should avoid. Strikes where the dead lay unburied and political instability and corruption came out from dying US conquests abroad as superpowers amassed growing arsenals of nuclear weapons. Everywhere there was a lurking Armageddon. Television heroes like Doctor Who offered some form of salvation in fiction where reality mirrored what script writers could imagine.

In the UK, the early part of this decade saw an explosion in suddenly “doing the right thing” regards hazardous chemicals dumped in the environment like confetti. I looked at this and the birth of The Deposit of Poisonous wastes Act HERE and HERE. One programme from script writers of the Time Lord series called Doomwatch captured people’s imagination of the times. I have named a list of the 1970’s passed hazardous waste licences, ironically not doing anything but making things worse for today after it HERE.

In reality in places like Oldbury in the shadow of a dangerous and toxic behemoth like Albright and Wilson the risks were still the same as they were years before their enduring pollution legacy. Things did not get better and neither did safety for residents or staff.

The  8th June 1973 Wolverhampton Express and Star offers a good example of how the media operated when it came to stories involving hazardous waste and pollution. On the one hand they report the incident, and yet with the other offer the polluters the opportunity to claim falsely that they are “investigating” and that it was a rare one off happening- which when you look at the longstanding record of this vile polluter, that is a lie.

This incident, another leak of acid gas, hydrochloric in this case , saw residents evacuated from their homes with the off site release. The M5 was fairly new at this stage, and so this too was affected. The mention of doomwatch is misleading as it implies the authorities were investigating, whereas, it was the polluters themselves who were attempting to pull the wool over people’s eyes.

The 23rd June article in the same paper is a typical cop out shit journalism which still continues today after such incidents, and is a PR piece attempt to move the story on from the real present danger to what they are going to do to claim it’s “safe”

Albright and Wilson were not going to do anything different at all, and nor would history show they had either with many , many subsequent incidents like this one. The “water wall” is a typical visual object to take away the gases that were still on site.

New “safety measures” are an old chemical industry gaslighting technique, and AW and their slimy political bent shills like Samuel  Melsom had done exactly the same trick with “The Oldbury Smell”. One can see the pattern of how they behave, and when you see this pattern, you can predict and call out the next one. Peter Bloore, liar and fantasist was notorious for these type of move the story on techniques also. The chemical industry continue to do this today. One woman’s nose appears to have been the only beacon for gauging pollution outside the Oldbury orifice for Jo public in the 70’s, as I looked at HERE. It should be noted that this was only a few years after these new safety measures were claimed to be being put in, thus proving the bullshit of AW. 

Rhodia did exactly the same with the issues on rattlechain. At first they denied the chemicals in the lagoon were harmful with the calcium phosphate bullshit. When white phosphorus was found in the birds they claimed there was not enough to poison them, knowing full well that the amount found was not the amount swallowed with this evanescent banned rat poison. When that bullshit finally became impossible to deny, they attempted to move the story on with the 2013 cover up works. Just swap the “water wall” with the geotextile membrane to cover up the harm to their cancerous brand.

Of course, these methods of these bent “scientists” do not just extend to gaslighting the public and attempting to control their behaviour and view of reality, it also extends to their hapless gullible staff. I’m sorry to say that many of them appear to be thicker than dogshit, and I don’t really have much in the way of sympathy when they finally see the light, to use an apt metaphor.

Not content with causing them phossy jaw and serious burns through direct contact with white phosphorus, AW had gassed some with chlorine in an episode I looked at HERE. 

This incident follows very soon after the so called “doomwatch investigation” into gassing the public and the 26 January 1974 Wolverhampton Express and Star again uses the same exact phrase FFS!

Again, the narrative is a feeble attempt to move the story on rather than castigate the scum who caused it. The Langley 27 were knocked out by the chemical warfare weapon, many needing hospital treatment, and I would wager suffering potential long lasting damage. No doubt AW management would press and quibble as to how much gas they had ingested before passing out, rather than how they had come to be gassed by negligence and poor health and safety.

Two staff however realised the seriousness of the situation, also spilling the beans as to how shite the AW plan was in terms of chemical releases. I wonder if they were tempted back or told to just shut their mouths by management the next time any releases were made? 😥

A brief but telling story from the 9th May 1997 Derry Journal. Rats get a bad deal and in my opinion are unfairly regarded as disease carrying vermin. AW of course made white phosphorus for this market with the chemical being used in poison baits. I’m not sure why this banned material would have been used in the story from 1997 however as the use was now widely illegal having been outlawed in 1963.

A dream home was allegedly burnt down when a rat that had swallowed p4 laced poison set a thatched roof on fire. No sympathy from me.

I can’t believe I have only just come across this one.

I have outlined the disastrous Albright and Wilson factory at Portishead in THIS POST.

The decommissioning of this site resulted in AW being prosecuted for enriching radioactive phosphorus, and admitted five offences under The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 and yet the serial liar PR man Peter Bloore failed to mention this in a future Albright World piece. In 1990, a major fire saw many barrels of p4 going up in smoke. Clearly, the place was a doomed operation in production and in dismantling.

I have looked at the decommissioning operation of the zoned areas of the site in an FOI response request HERE. 

A Bristol Evening Post article of 16th May 1997 however reveals a new off site threat that came from this factory and its activities. At this time, the plant was being decommissioned according to the reports received during the FOI request. This obviously was both a failure of the company and those carrying out the works, including their consultants who were shite.  At the same time as this work was ongoing a former Royal Navy Yacht, the history of which I will look at further on in this post was being converted into a rich man’s plaything. However, workers on the vessel were complaining of being burnt and also that the fibre glass hull was being damaged by chemicals from the AW factory.

The millionaire owner , unnamed, was considering taking legal action against the polluters!

It is revealed in further columns that the former HMS TENACITY had been hit by escapes of phosphorus, though I suspect this was a mixture of phosphorus vapour and phosphorus pentoxide.

It is typical that AW refer to the size of the emission rather than the fact they should not have released anything off site at all. I have course had this same bullshit from their management regards the “small amounts ” of P4 that were in rattlechain lagoon, that were also “small amounts” found in the birds poisoned by their fucking chemical within that. They lie with a straight face and a “grin” of a horny nun below the cassock.

I suspect that this factory operated in exactly the same way as at Oldbury at this time in that as an EA report in 1997 noted,  senior manager’s bonusses were linked to environmental performances. If you could pin the blame on weather, acts of God, or anything then they would try it on. You could also of course be rewarded for attempting to cover them up.

The following year, and still during the life of the decommissioning works, the Clevedon Mercury article of 23rd July 1998 told that the conversion of the yacht had been put off altogether and the ship was now to be scrapped!

HMS TENACITY

This vessel was built in Portsmouth by Vosper Thorneycroft in 1969. It was an experimental fast patrol boat which eventually was taken on by the Royal Navy three years later. There is more on its history HERE. A piece in The Dover Express dated 2nd August 1974 shows it in its prime billed as “the fastest ship in The Royal Navy”. At this point it was based in Dover. There is also some irony that the vessel was used for “fisheries protection” duties. Albright and Wilson of course were adapt at poisoning fish around this time with white phosphorus in their doomed Long Harbour Venture. 

There has to be a great deal of irony in all of these connections.

OPINION

So another unmandated tenure of a position that no tax payer ever voted for is to take place in just a few days time. No one ever voted to create The West Midlands Combined Authority and the gravy train for the political class and their civil service stooges.

The incumbent mayor Andy Street is a regional joke. At every conceivable opportunity he is there, usually donning his custom hard hat and waving an arm in a passionate fit like a semi hard on trying to hulk up. You can see the comedy likeness potential of Charles Hawtrey and The Wealdstone Raider, and it is these comments that usually dominate social media whenever a new Street photo pops up.

Let’s be clear, this is not a personal attack, Street was a successful businessman who worked his way up through a certain company, but that is where it should have ended. We do not need an industrialist, a philanthropist or a rich man who owns multiple houses telling us what to do, making pointless soundbites and steering us towards an authoritarian tomorrow like the ghastly little London goblin Khant.

We do not need regional mayors, police and crime commissioners or any other figurehead based on some Yank big idea. Too much power is at stake here, and the political class already have too much of that when our freedoms become ever more restricted because of their actions leading us to wars, “pandemic” hoaxes, 15 minute cities, and unrestricted immigration which is clearly destroying the fabric of our society.

If you cannot speak the language of a country before you arrive there to stay indefinitely, you are not welcome here; on a boat, in a plane or by any other means. Our country is full, The West Midlands is full and yet the rampant house building agenda of Street and the other would be candidates let’s face it is to house even more of this fucking leaching scum. Enough! They however, our “leaders”, flee the West Midlands to places like Malvern, The Derbyshire Dales or Herefordshire like white flight doves seeking greener pastures.

Street’s big idea- the “brownfield first” agenda is an Armageddon for those who live in large towns which will grow beyond their capacity, and they already are. Remember West Bromwich Town centre- The “Golden Mile”?- look at what it is today, and look at the soiled faces of those who pound the streets there. It has become a no go shit hole, a college that breeds feral vermin and gangs that stab one another- a place to be avoided, and yet this dead duck Government, its vacating MP, and Street believes that pouring more money into it will make it a better place. You could not be more wrong, and derided politicians of the past are being proved more right every day. 😉

Street sucks up to business and offers no criticism of the most vile of the bunch Severn Trent Water. These Coventry cunts have systematically polluted our rivers and pools across the West Midlands, their staff and CEO lie, and yet they were rewarded with promotion during the ghastly Birmingham Commonwealth Games, and have been let off the hook by the Tories on every occasion for their sewage pollution discharges. Only re-nationalising the water industry will stop this, and stop their land banking scam from continuing- very much a part of Street’s brownfield first agenda.

The number of companies registered in tax evasion scum holes like Jersey is off the scale, and a part of the land banking corrupt fraud that money from Government is rewarding. The “levelling up” scam is a concave hole being dug sideways and backfilled with foundry sand and whatever other crap can be found. If we get four more years of this man, I doubt we will have any green spaces left in The Black Country, except pockets in Dudley and Walsall where his blue mates hang on to their voting fan club like turds in a dry well. Fuck their “precious greenbelt”, Crooked house restoration nonsense and other gimmick playing to the gallery white middle class middle-aged nonsense.

But is Labour the answer? The answer is NO. The other 4 candidates have no chance of winning and are wasting their time. Richard Parker is another man with glasses businessman who makes the extraordinary and so far not fact checked boasts of bringing £1 billion into the West Midlands. I do not believe the claim in his literature at all, but have not seen anyone ask him to prove the boast- well I open it up to him here. Give me a breakdown please of this figure and WHO it has benefitted, and not what companies it has benefitted which are two very different things.

What prosperity has he brought with this money when you look at areas within Birmingham and beyond? Why do Labour talk of regeneration like their opposite numbers as though they have never been in power, when we know what a fucking shit show they made before in Government when there was “no money left”. Labour are now tentatively using The Union Flag in their literature making them look more like a BNP advent calendar where a would be candidate lurks behind the flag turn of an A5 leaflet. It is a cynical stunt, but easy to spot, just don’t be fooled by it- just like Blair’s New Labour of Old.

No, we do not need Parker or Street, or a Chief Commissioner Gordon to manage a bunch of woke prancing coppers scouring social media to nab some ne’er-do-well as the murderers, rapists and thieves get off scot free by becoming “women” with dicks . If they were big enough, they would put a “none of the below” on the ballot paper or hold a referendum on the Position to be scrapped- unlike they did when the position was created. But they won’t because they are politicians, and all politicians are cowards, hiding behind words, party brand manipulation , soundbites and ultimately the pigs in uniforms who guard them passing laws to be upheld that make our lives increasingly authoritarian and less able to criticise the misery that they cause.

But I do urge people to spoil their vote and make it a referendum on scrapping this post. It is after all the only message that can be sent in an undemocratic system. 

 

 

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. 

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.

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.

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!

 

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

companies_house_document (6)

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. 😛 😛

Loan made by council to private company registered in Jersey – a Freedom of Information request to Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council – WhatDoTheyKnow

“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.

17_Minutes_08-03-17

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.

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.

19_Minutes_13-3-19

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.

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.

 

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. 

Shidas-Lane-65

Why are the council asking for interested parties to contact them?

 

 

 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. 

Shidas Lane site remediation fund for tax haven company owned site – a Freedom of Information request to West Midlands Combined Authority – WhatDoTheyKnow

“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!

ic-135155-r0b8

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.”

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.

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” ,

And so once again, the greened over patch began to become barren again.

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 31^st 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.

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.