By Lee Trewhela
The new leader of Cornwall Council has questioned whether the local authority should carry out an inquiry into the recent spaceport scandal.
However, councillor Leigh Frost says it’s a conversation the local authority definitely needs to have.
We reported this week that former Conservative cabinet member for the economy Louis Gardner – who stood down as a councillor last month – has been found by the council to have been in breach of its code of conduct.
Cornwall Council has referred one breach to Devon and Cornwall Police.
It came after the Newquay councillor failed to declare an interest during a meeting when £200,000 of government funding was allotted to Spaceport Cornwall. Two days before the meeting he had accepted a top job at the space facility, which is based at Newquay airport.
Concerns had previously been raised about how the former councillor, who had strong links with the spaceport due to his economic portfolio role, was employed in the head of future air and space role when he was far less qualified than many of the other candidates. He resigned from the position last month after Cornwall Council withdrew the £200k Shared Prosperity Fund allocation.
In recent weeks – before and after the May 1 council election – a number of former and current councillors have questioned whether there should be an inquiry into the matter. I asked the Lib Dem leader of Cornwall Council if his administration will be calling for an inquiry into the controversy.
Cllr Frost said: “It’s something we need to talk about; it is a conversation we need to have. Whether it needs to be a formal inquiry is another thing as obviously he’s [Louis Gardner] moved on now, which is the right thing for him to do. Half the problem is all the players that were involved in it have gone.
“The chief executive of Corserv came in just as it happened, the managing director at the airport has gone and Kate Kennally [Cornwall Council’s chief executive] as the shareholder found out only a couple of days before the rest of us. I remember contacting her about it at the time and she was blindsided like everyone else, in fairness to her.
“If we invest money into a full inquiry, are we going to get anything out of it? That’s the key thing, but we definitely need to have conversations about it at the very least.”
Concerning the future of the space hub itself, he added: “We need to look at the spaceport. When we did the airport inquiry we were told it is now in a profitable position, so if it’s wiping its own face there’s no reason for it not to continue. It may not be a spaceport as we envisaged it in the past because, obviously, there’s an issue with horizontal launches now. If we’ve got a high-tech sector where people invest and it’s making a return, then it can continue. If that changes, there are conversations to be had.”
What about the airport, where there was a failed bid by the last Tory administration to find a financial partner to run the estate?
“We all know how much benefit having an airport has to Cornwall – it’s £90 million of gross value added to the Cornish economy, which is amazing,” said Cllr Frost. “I’m not against developing the estate or a private investor coming in. What I do have an issue is with losing control as that’s premium land there that we’ve got. It won’t be a short-term project.”
A spokesperson for Cornwall Council said there’s no spaceport inquiry planned as a comprehensive investigation resulted in the council recognising that Mr Gardner breached five points of its code of conduct.
Graham Smith adds:
I fear it is going to take more than a “conversation” to learn what went so disastrously wrong at Newquay airport/spaceport over the past four years, where a culture of obsessive secrecy went unchallenged for so long that one of the most damaging scandals ever to cloud Cornwall Council became inevitable.
Let us not forget that County Hall’s initial response, in March, was very different to what it is now.
In March, officials cheerfully lent themselves to a cover-up. It was not until after the election on 1st May that they became self-styled seekers after the truth.
The council’s chief executive, Kate Kennally, has admitted in an FOI that she knew about it on 5th March. She could have intervened to protect the interests of Corserv shareholders. She didn’t. She took the view that it was all nothing to do with her.
Instead of asking “what’s the right thing to do?” she asked “what can we get away with?”
It was not until Cornwall Reports broke the story on 11th March that most people became aware, forcing County Hall to respond. And the council’s initial official statement was to welcome the appointment of councillor Louis Gardner to the role of Head of Future Air and Space.
The council issued a press release insisting he was the right man for the job and that the public was lucky to be getting a man of his calibre.
A “conversation” is going to be of no use at all! Who has leant on you already to make you think a conversation is going to solve this HUGE travesty of justice! We need the truth here! Those who are ducking this are trying to save themselves!
There have been horrendously corrupt deals taking place here and it needs INVESTIGATION. You were elected to represent the local tax payers, to ensure open and transparent governance so PLEASE get to the bottom of this and all the arms length companies devious deals!
Ex Cllr Gardner is the putrid pimple left festering on the arse of the decaying corpse of Mrs Kennally’s administration. Her dominant role and influence over our simpering sycophant of an ex leader, was always evident. Yet when given the opportunity to act pre-emptively, Mrs K did nothing. That is not leadership, that is cowardice. She cannot dodge blame for not acting, by dumping it on Corserv. The only reason the plethora of arms length companies we have, are allowed to exist within local government, is their ‘teckal’ status.This was a legal ruling, part of which states the arms length companies so created are under council control, as If a department of the administration. If Mrs Kennally as Head of the paid service, cannot exercise that control then their ‘teckal’ status must be questioned. If she continues her ” Nothing to do with me” defense, then the whole corrupt edifice of arms length companies may come crashing down , just as she and her wife cross the Tamar on their way out.
John
You have articulated the problem particularly well.
The pesky arms length companies are a barely legal fiddle cynically devised to pass bucks and deflect blame in a devious highly questionable manner that is the exact antithesis of the transparency and integrity that should be the vital ingredient of any healthy properly functioning democratic organisation.
The latter unlamented leader was the perfect ”patsy”, literally putty in Kennally and Masons hands, naive beyond words yet overconfident and consequently arrogant beyond her demonstrably limited ability, the perfect successor to the previous two congenitally incompetent stooges (now recycled into the new council) who set the stage for the financial disaster we now face, whipped on by Kennally and Mason yet again.
Cornwall Councils management structure has been tested and found sadly wanting, reporting systems are demonstrably (deliberately?) inadequate insofar that the top claims (by way of an excuse) not to know what the bottom has been up to, when given the pay scales involved one could reasonably assume that it is actually the senior managements job to know, no ifs, no buts, and certainly no lame excuses.
That is why the allegations of misbehaviour in public office must be taken very seriously by extending the current investigation beyond the spaceport fiasco (potential sideshow?) right to the top of the Kremlin tree and into every area of Cornwall Councils frequently incompetently executed activity beyond its statutory obligations into the realms of casino capitalism which seems to have become an addiction.
This ideally suggests that there should be a independent DOGE style in depth forensic audit that goes through the Kremlins books like a dose of salts, it has been called for before, this time the request should not be ignored given the obvious potential for ”hanky pinky”in relation to the sheer scale of debt accrued for no apparent public benefit.
No one should be above examination or immune to the full weight of the law if found to have actually misbehaved in public office.
I wager that the officers (the usual suspects) concerned have already been working their malign mischief behind the scenes to influence the ”conversation”, because sure as hell in the same manner that the Prime Minister is increasingly shit scared of Mr Farage, the fourth floor mafia at Kremlin Kernow is obviously more than fully aware of the can of worms that will be opened should the bones in the Kremlin basement be rattled too hard.
The more so given the ongoing police investigation into the nefarious ”goings on” at the spaceport by the previous administration, it is to be sincerely hoped that the promising new leader will not be deflected from the absolute imperative that transparency actually means what it says on the tin, as in hides nothing in the search for truth and integrity, that has hitherto been so sadly lacking.