‘Naive Oversight’ Kept Property Agent’s Role in Drafting GBC Report and Letter Hidden

Published on: 9 Oct, 2019
Updated on: 10 Oct, 2019

Former Cllr Hodge’s letter in support of GBC’s Wisley garden village proposal

By Martin Giles

The failure to make clear the extent of a developer’s agent in writing a report and drafting a letter of support presented by Guildford Borough Council was “a naive oversight” according to an internal investigation.

The investigation conducted by a lawyer, and former GBC monitoring officer, Richard Lingard, was launched following revelations that a report and a letter of support from the former leader of Surrey County Council, David Hodge, were, in fact, drafted by Savills, agents of Wisley Property Investment Limited who wish to develop the former Wisley Airfield site.

The letter of support was presented at a council meeting, by the then GBC leader Paul Spooner, without any indication of its true origin. Cllr Spooner has stated that he nor his deputy knew that it had been drafted by Savills.

The managing director of GBC James Whiteman concluded that “while there are lessons to be learned, …there is no finding of a breach of conduct rules – whether by officers or members”. The investigation also found: “No officer or member breached the Nolan principles of openness.”

Whether all councillors and all parties will accept the council leaders pronouncement that the “matter is closed” remains to be seen. The matter was raised without debate under “Leaders communications” at the beginning of last night’s (October 8) full council meeting. (The summary of the investigation’s findings, provided by GBC, can be seen below.)

Cllr Caroline Reeves

Cllr Reeves (Lib Dem, Friary & St Nicolas) said: “My understanding with the Wisley Garden Village applications, in general, is that it is more beneficial for the expertise and finance to be with the council and not with the applicant in these situations, however, I am pleased to say that the outcome of the review has indicated that there was no wrongdoing in this case.”

Cllr Susan Parker (GGG, Send) asked if the Council Leader Caroline Reeves was “comfortable with the fact… Savills wrote the letter on behalf of the council”.

A summary of the report shows that Savills declined to answer any questions and that it could not be established if GBC had paid Savill’s for their work. Nor does the summary confirm what Cllrs Spooner and Furniss knew of Savills involvement.

Motion for greater openness passed unanimously

Later during last night’s full council meeting, a motion calling for greater openness was unanimously adopted

Cllr Christopher Barrass

The motion Cllr Christopher Barrass (R4GV, Clandon & Horsley) referring to election manifestos stated: “This council believes that we are yet to make good on promises made to the electorate to be more open and transparent in all of our actions.”

Introducing the motion at the meeting Cllr Barrass said: “The council is here to serve the people… and the full participation and engagement with the people of this borough is essential is to operate in this [open] way and most importantly have the trust and support of the residents it represents.

Quoting from government guidance he continued: “ ‘Local authorities should start from the presumption of openness and disclosure of information and not rely on exemptions to withhold information less absolutely necessary.’ “

The motion, adopted unanimously, requires all restricted committee reports to state why, at the point the agenda is published, they are to be treated as exempt from the Access to Information publication rules, to whom within the council the content is restricted, when, following a period of exemption, the exempt information can be made public, and details of how the decision to maintain the exemption may be challenged. Additionally, all working group reports are to be made available to all councillors.

Cllr Paul Spooner

The former leader of the council Paul Spooner (Con, Ash South & Tongham) said: “Reading this it makes it sound as if this is some sort of success story to be presented by Residents for Guildford on information and data that is already available to all councillors. It doesn’t talk about public, it talks about councillors.”

Cllr Gordon Jackson (Ind, Pirbright) added: “All of this has been done anyway but the one thing I would like to clarify is that there are certain areas where there is very significant impact that can result from information being published.” He gave the example of discussions on road and car park planning and the possibility to blight possibly affected properties.

Cllr Susan Parker

Cllr Susan Parker said: “We do need to have a culture of openness. To some degree, I think Cllr Manning and Spooner have a valid reason for objection because actually, I think we have become more secretive rather than less over the last year or so and for most of the previous administration I think that there was less of a culture of secrecy.”

Cllr John Rigg

John Rigg, now a R4GV councillor for Holy Trinity but formerly the chairman of Guildford Vision Group, said he supported the motion because of his experience in that role. He said he found [the council] “almost impenetrable” and had had difficulty getting information from the then leader, Cllr Paul Spooner and the deputy leader, Matt Furniss. “I wrote with long lists of questions about perfectly normal, innocent things transportation or planning issues and they were not available and they were not available from the officers because of the way the council was conducted at that time…. We do need to have a cultural change of being on the side of the residents.”

Cllr Ruth Brothwell (R4GV, Worplesdon) wanted to support Cllr Parker, adding: “My own experience as a new councillor attending meetings… has been that some officers will suddenly, at the very end of the meeting, turn round and say, ‘Oh, by the way, all this is confidential.’ and you are left feeling why? Yes, it was about planning perhaps but why is it confidential?”

The summary of the investigator’s report in full:

Review of working relationships between stakeholders in relation to the promotion and submission of an application for Garden Village status for the future development of the former Wisley Airfield.

Summary of report findings, and comments in response from the Managing Director

The Managing Director requested that the Monitoring Officer make arrangements for an independent review take place, on the following terms:

[To conduct] a review of working relationships between stakeholders in relation to the promotion and submission of an application for Garden Village status for the future development of the former Wisley Airfield.

Richard Lingard (RL), a consultant with extensive experience of local government (a summary of whose experience and background is at the appendix below), was commissioned to carry this out, and made arrangements to speak to officers, members and the agents for the developers of the Wisley site, Savills.

It has been agreed between the Managing Director, and the Leader of the Council that this summary of the report (which contains records of confidential discussions with staff members) be produced, together with a note of the Managing Director’s conclusions in response.

Review

RL spoke to the Director of Planning and Regeneration and relevant officers in Planning Policy and was provided with relevant documents.  He also submitted written questions to Savills regarding their involvement, however Savills declined to provide any comment.

The review looked in particular at the preparatory work pursuant to report which was submitted to the Executive in October 2018, seeking authorisation for the Council to make an application for Garden Village status for the Wisley site.

Garden Village status provides funding to the Council to enable it to buy-in the expertise necessary to deal with a planning application for such a large scale development and would ensure a high-quality development. The report was dealt with as an urgent item by the Council’s executive, owing to an imminent deadline for submitting funding applications, of November.

RL found that officers were not aware of the opportunity to apply for funding until August, and officer capacity to deal with the application was limited due to work on the local plan and annual leave commitments – including the availability of the then Leader of the Council and competing demands on his time.  Officers also advised that they did not have the experience necessary to submit such an application.

Savills had the necessary expertise and provided material to the Planning Policy team to enable them to complete the application and report to the Executive.  This support included drafting letters of support for signature by Surrey County Council and the EM3 Local Enterprise Partnership. Officers confirmed that they wrote the Executive report using material supplied by Savills and wrote a note for the Lead Councillor.  The letters of support were said to be template letters, which Savills had used successfully in the past.

RL was not able to identify exactly how Savills came to be involved and the basis of their engagement (in particular, whether they were paid). There is no evidence of a formal contract having been in place for support, specifically, in relation to this piece of work, nor is there evidence of any payment having been made. It is the understanding of the officers interviewed that there was no payment.

RL’s conclusions:

RL noted that collaborative working between the Council and developers is essential for the planning system to function.  In this case, the joint aim was to secure a high-quality development. The application for funding will not have any bearing on the determination of future planning applications.

The arrangement with Savills most likely came about as a result of them volunteering assistance on a pro-bono basis.  The lack of a formal arrangement and clear terms on whether payment would be made, or not, was a concern to RL.
Savills’ contribution to the report and supporting material should have been spelt out in the report and the reasons for their involvement, namely lack of in-house expertise and shortage of time, should have been explained.

No officer or member breached the Nolan principles of openness.

There is no evidence of any member of staff having an inappropriately close relationship with Savills.

The work was not progressed at an early stage, necessitating urgent intervention toward the deadline for bid submission.

The failure to make clear the extent of Savills’ involvement in writing the report and supporting information was, it was concluded, as a naïve oversight.

Council conclusion:

The Managing Director has considered the report in full and in particular that while there are lessons to be learned, that there is no finding of a breach of conduct rules – whether by officers or members.

Clear lessons to learn from this include the need to clearly state, define, and document  the role of supporting consultants, signalling that to councillors, and in relation to the programming of work activities, and resources in support of those activities – especially in the context of very busy periods of work, and these are noted.

Another lesson is that officers must ensure ward councillors are fully informed of issues affecting or involving their wards.  This, and related, wider communications, need to be clear – with a commitment to transparency, especially in the context of matters of significance and special sensitivity. Related communications should also be thought through to carefully convey messages that explain situations clearly and allay any suspicions or concern.

On specific matters, the Managing Director notes that there was reference to the lead site promoter, Wisley Property Investments LTD and their consultant team – with logos of Savills, and that there was no attempt to hide the support of Savills in the preparation, but still considers that this was not spelt out clearly enough.

In relation to Savills making no comment, it is assumed this is due to client confidentiality.

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