£100k of taxpayers’ money used to fund legal battle to save Derwenthorpe project (From York Press)

£100k of taxpayers’ money used to fund legal battle to save Derwenthorpe project

12:00pm Monday 23rd August 2010 in

Exclusive By Mark Stead » mark.stead@thepress.co.uk

Skip social links
Print
Email
Comments(23)

MORE than £100,000 of taxpayers’ money was spent on the European legal battle to save one of York’s largest and most controversial developments.

The full cost of City of York Council’s row with the European Commission over the 540-home Derwenthorpe model village scheme has been revealed following an investigation by The Press.

Documents obtained under the Audit Commission Act show the authority paid £60,787.94 to Leeds-based law firm Shulmans during the 2009/10 financial year for advice on the argument, on top of the £44,575 it forked out the year before.

The Commission became involved after the council sold the land to the Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust without going out to open tender, but said earlier this year that while the deal did not comply with European Union procurement rules, the case should not be referred to the European courts.

Seven invoices sent to the council by Shulmans between April last year and and February this year show the firm asked for payment for all meetings, train travel, taxi fares, mileage, parking, telephone calls and letters relating to the case. The heftiest invoice, sent out in July 2009, was for £24,061.94.

The council has said the Commission’s decision paves the way for Derwenthorpe to be built. The Trust will now invite tenders from companies across the European Union to bid for the construction of homes in four phases, but those opposing the scheme have vowed not to call off their attempts to block it.

“The possible implications of the European Commission’s rules were flagged up as far back as 2003 and were dismissed by the council,” said Mark Warters, who chairs Osbaldwick Parish Council and has been a leading campaigner against the model village proposals.

“It is regrettable that they have had to spend this money when they should have been fully aware of these rules back then. Perhaps they would not have needed to spend it if they had taken this issue more seriously.

“I also feel that senior council staff should have had the expertise to deal with this matter rather than the authority needing outside legal advice.”

Council leader Andrew Waller said: “The cost to the council of this legal advice is money which could otherwise have been used for public services in the city.

“As the Derwenthorpe case was setting a legal precedent, we could not do all the work in-house and so had to seek advice from a specialist legal team. Delays in responses by the UK Government and the European Commission all added to the costs, but we did all we could to speed things up to reach the final lifting of the case against York as quickly as possible.

“The council took legal advice in 2002 on handling the Derwenthorpe project and acted within the advice based on the understanding of EU procurement law at that time. Nobody could have predicted that, five years later, a court case in rural France would completely change the working of this part of procurement law and leave Derwenthorpe trapped in a legal case.

“The council’s difficult position was made worse by the way in which the European Commission will only talk to Government civil servants, and so York was often stuck in the middle without direct access to the people assessing the case.

“We made sure all the steps required of York were done quickly and reported to the European Commission and I also had to lobby Government ministers to speed up responses from civil servants. If that had not been done, we would have been landed with an even higher legal bill.”

Comments(23)

Yosser Hughes says...
12:51pm Mon 23 Aug 10

Andrew Waller passing the buck again. Why cant he just say sorry and admit another 100 grand of taxpayers money has been abused by the Lib Dems?