Yahoo News Club at Tuffley Park fiasco debated in secret as civic chiefs bar public from council meeting
The Club at Tuffley Park debacle was discussed in secret by civic chiefs last night (July 1) as they barred the public from a Gloucester City Council meeting. People’s wedding parties and other events were cancelled at short notice last year after the previous tenant got into financial difficulties.
The City Council retook possession of the building in August 2023 and civic chiefs told a public meeting in January that this fiasco may have cost taxpayers £160,000 in rent arrears and unpaid bills. Council leaders are expected to soon grant a 10 year lease to a new tenant, One Church, to run the venue.
They estimate it will cost around £50,000 to repair the club’s roof, make the building watertight and ensure the building is compliant on handover. Renting the property is expected to provide an annual income of £10,000 per year for the authority. And the repair works have already been budgeted for the current financial year.
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Councillor Stephanie Chambers (C, Quedgeley Fieldcourt) asked at the overview and scrutiny committee meeting what the council was doing to get the money back from the previous tenant. She also asked what the current status is of that company.
A council officer said the company has not entered liquidation voluntarily and they are working with their solicitors. “There are a lot of people who make up the list of creditors who are all working together to force the company into liquidation,” she said.
“So that we can then start that process. Unfortunately until they do go into liquidation there isn’t a great deal we can do.
“As landlords we have taken the property back so that we can get back into use. That was our main concern and our focus.
“And then all of the costs that we are incurring with unpaid rent, business rates and the state of the building, anything that was deemed a breach of the lease, it’s in the hands of our litigation team.”
Chairman Andrew Gravells (C, Abbeydale) asked the monitoring officer at what point, if any, they “needed to go into secret session”. He asked if there was not anything more the officer and cabinet member could tell the committee without excluding the public.
Resources cabinet member Declan Wilson (LD, Hucclecote) said the situation of the previous tenant was irrelevant to the council’s decision to issue the lease to a new tenant. He said the committee was “maybe being side tracked into a separate area” and that the issue did not need to be discussed that night.
Cllr Gravells said: “It was made clear that the committee would wish to look at what happened up until the point we invited tenders from different organisations. “We did make that clear.
"We are not springing it on anybody. If we want to pursue that I’m afraid we are going to have to go into a secret session.”
The committee voted to exclude the public and debated the issue behind closed doors for almost 20 minutes before letting the press and public back into the meeting.
