Somerset County Hall, an iconic Grade II listed building in the centre of the county town Taunton has been sprayed with red paint for a fourth time. The council has spent thousands having the hall cleaned-up each time.
The repeated defacing is down to unidentified Palestine / Israeli protesters trying to force the council to evict a defence firm, one of its commercial tenants occupying a building near Bristol.
The protesters are claiming the firm has connections to Israel and that it is supplying the country with arms. But the company says it supplies arms to the British army, none of which are sent to Israel from its Bristol factory site.
Somerset Council has said that it is: "disappointed at further criminal damage" to its building, which has now had its windows smashed and the plaques either side of the entrance broken.”
[Source: Somerset County Gazette - main image shows smashed windows, plaques and red paint sprayed on the front of Somerset's County Hall]
The Palestine Action group previously targeted the building in April and March with similar red paint protests and claimed responsibility for the latest damage.
The group has again criticised Somerset Council over its business tenant, Elbit Systems UK, which occupies a building the council owns near Bristol. The Aztec West 600 building is part of a wider commercial property investment portfolio which is in the process of selling some of it off.
As a result of the action the Liberal controlled Somerset Council had previously voted to investigate ways to legally evict the tenant or sell the building. As it happens the council has approved sales of some of its iconic buildings, and it is in the early stages of divesting its commercial property portfolio to help fill a £100mn debt hole. The council also needs to fund a redundancy programme affecting up to 25 percent of its workforce.
Somerset Council is one of several throughout the country with financial problems after they invested in commercial properties with the aim of providing income to fund everyday running costs.
The investments were made several years ago when councils could access funds at low interest rates. What’s happened since is that property values have shrunk by 20 percent and more, while interest rates have increased.
The upshot is, most of these properties instead of being a source of funds have become a drain on the councils’ resources. They are a liability with no end in sight for recovery. The only likely option is a fire-sale which will mean a substantial loss on the council’s investments, which originally totalled over £300mn.
The council's Resources and Corporate Scrutiny Committee was to advise on the proposals to help bridge an £80m funding gap in the current financial year and a £100m budget gap for 2025/2026, at their meeting on July 24.
Somerset Council voted on Monday and has authorised the sale of its non-operational assets, with a combined value of between £17m and £21m.
Several buildings, car parks and other small parcels of land have been identified for disposal encouraged by central government as part of an ongoing review of assets in line with the council’s Asset Management Strategy, and Policy for the Disposal of Assets, approved by the Executive at the time of the government bail-out last November 2023.
The initial sites for sale include Manor Farm in Lopen, Market House in Taunton, Barns Close Industrial Estate in Dulverton, and Cornhill Complex in Bridgwater.
“Somerset Council has a commercial investment strategy that supports its strategic vision and objectives.
The council has a diverse and resilient portfolio of commercial investment assets that generate income returns. The fundamental objective is to deliver net revenue which will help fund council services.
The commercial investment property portfolio consists of a range of commercial assets, including:
The council has also invested via a joint venture in several battery energy storage schemes which contribute to the resilience of the national electricity system, while delivering return on the investment to the council.”
But unfortunately, many of these investments have not turned out as anticipated and some currently lie unoccupied.
Somerset Councils is now an amalgamation of 4 district councils, so redundancies were probably inevitable to reduce duplication, but the debt situation has made them all the more necessary.
More than 350 people have applied for voluntary redundancy since the council announced the programme with 201 of those accepted. 49 have since been ratified by councillors due to their high salary costs of over £100,000.
The roles being made redundant initially include highly paid council staff including the chief finance officer and the director of public health. Those are mandatory posts the council must maintain, but the authority has said they will be “subsumed into different roles in the council's restructure.”
Other voluntary redundancies, many of which don’t need formal approval, will save the council moreover £8m per year which goes only a little way to bridging the £100m budget gap it had at the start of this year. In addition, the redundancies will have a short-term cost, a one-off sum of £12.84m, with the authority saying a saving will be made on the staff shedding in under two years.
The property report outlines the council’s proposals to dispose of several non-operational buildings and small parcels of land, many of which have development potential. They include several iconic and landmark buildings - the Market House in Taunton and the Cornhill in Bridgwater for example.
The proposed sell-off sites have a combined estimated capital receipt value in the range of £17m to £21m. However, the council has said that information relating to individual asset disposals will remain commercially confidential.
Cllr Ros Wyke, lead member for economic development, planning and assets, said:
“Somerset Council is committed to evaluation of and, where appropriate, rationalisation of its surplus property and land portfolio to reduce costs and ensure that the council's estate is financially sustainable.
“This drastic action is in response to the well documented financial emergency facing Somerset Council and the capitalisation direction approved by the former Government which encouraged us to sell surplus property and assets, and use the capital receipts to fund essential services, like adults and children’s social care.
The Leader of Somerset Council, Cllr Bill Revans, is to lobby the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, setting out the challenges councils like Somerset are facing and calling for urgent action to prioritise local government finances.
See her the full list of properties Sommerset Council is likely to dispose of.
Somerset Council Investment Asset Report - performance of Commercial Property investments since July 2022
Tags:
Comments