The council is to set aside millions of pounds in case the Brighton i360 continues to default on its loan repayments.
The “provision” in the accounts is likely to be £2.2 million a year and to be a feature of the annual accounts for many years to come.
The revelation came this evening (Thursday 9 February) at a meeting of Brighton and Hove City Council’s Policy and Resources Committee at Hove Town Hall.
The former Labour leader of the council, Daniel Yates, was scathing about the business, with the council left liable for servicing a loan for the i360 from the Public Works Loan Board.
And he was scornful of the prospect of the i360 stumping up £1 million in the coming year towards the outstanding total of £47 million.
Councillor Yates welcomed the inclusion of the “provision” in the budget. But he said that the council’s external auditors had made clear that they were concerned about the loan repayments and expected the risk to be recognised in the budget.
Green councillor Tom Druitt, who chairs the i360 working group, said that a fully costed new business plan would go before a special meeting of the Policy and Resources Committee.
Councillor Yates said that when the committee met last month, it was promised the revised business plan but this was still awaited.
Potential repayment figures were based on “flowery ideas”, he said, adding: “We were told by the end of that month (January) they would be presenting a business case to this council – not just coming in and talking about flowers and unicorns because, quite frankly, this city is sick of flowers and unicorns.
“It’s already facing 20 years of repayments (to the Public Works Loan Board) at £2.2 million a year – £44 million coming out of our budget – not because of central government cuts but because of useless business people that have singularly failed to deliver the returns that were expected from them when they did produce a business case which is still being kept secret from everyone.
“The fact now we’re willing to take their word for it on the basis of wouldn’t it be nice if suddenly lots of money started pouring out the top of the i360 doesn’t sound to me like good governance.”
Millions of pounds of repayments by the i360 have been missed because of bad weather, the coronavirus pandemic restrictions and visitor numbers falling short of forecasts.
Councillors agreed to a revised loan agreement last summer but the i360 did not sign the deal although it did hand over £700,000.
In December, the i360 was due to pay at least £900,000 but failed to make any payment although council finance chief Nigel Manvell said that efforts to recover some money were continuing.
We hear the white elephant is being renamed’ The Jason Kitcat memorial folly’.
Just sell it.
Toilet Gr££n administration han been catastrophic for the city.
Everything the Greens put their grimy hands on they turn to s………..
What’s £2.2m a year to our Green masters?
They allocate £10m a year to their Climate Emergency slush fund for any schemes they want when no defined benefits, and I recall about £2m a year goes to Tom Druitt’s Big Lemon Buses.
Shame about public toilets, libraries, weeds, and broken infrastructure.
To attract top workers and entrepreneurs from around the world and the UK Brighton must be an attractive place to settle down and make your future.
Liveable city with good amenities and public services.
It seems that Brighton is far from that at the moment.
More importantly, more homes, because without those, there’s no point in having the rest.
“Millions of pounds of repayments by the i360 have been missed because of bad weather, the coronavirus pandemic restrictions and visitor numbers falling short of forecasts.”
In fact it has been a disaster right from the start, and it is time the council recognised this and stopped pretending that it can be saved. As an experience it is a total waste of money, as there is very little worth seeing in the 20 minutes one is up there. It should be dismantled and sold for scrap, and just become a terrible memory of a dark period in the fortunes of Brighton & Hove Council.
I’m guessing that selling or scrapping won’t necessarily recover the £44 million though. The debt will be sticking around even if the I360 does not.
But at least we wouldn’t have to see that hideous monstrosity from wherever we are in the city. City? That’s a laugh for a start. Dump would be a more appropriate word for it.
I always knew this folly would just be an expensive place for rough sleepers to live near.
It was, and remains, a disgusting waste of money. A symbol of the lack of care this city has for the people who live here.
If you remember the state of the sea front after Labour had been in power for years . Decrepit West Pier, the rotting portacabins, a Sunday market selling tat.
At least the Greens and Tories tried something. I don’t know how much having a sea-front worth visiting brings for the city but it’s a vast improvement from what Labour left behind,
Labour whinge about business people who don’t know what they’re doing but they never even had a plan
Yes well done Tories and Greens – £50 million already and £2 million ongoing such fantastic value for money.
Jon
The area around the i360 looks splendid, there’s no doubting that, however the problem is the so called attraction.
I’m sure the area could have been improved without a £44m price tag.
When the proposals were first published it was obvious it was never ever going to meet the predicted numbers.
So many question marks, for example they said it would run 3 times an hour every twenty minutes. With the expected numbers, there’s no way you can un-load and re-load in the time scale. Say 5 minutes to load and that’s being generous, so already running five late etc etc.
The numbers, 800K is what they predicted, 400k to cover the costs, actually numbers, nowhere near as we know.
We asked a lot of questions that went unanswered, we could see plenty of flaws in the plans and the numbers and expressed our views that this wasn’t going to be the money spinner and would be a flop.
Some stupid people told us that we were wrong and we didn’t know what we were talking about, well we did, some of us can see the problems, I just wonder why they couldn’t see simple flaws in a scheme.
Now factor in, parking, road traffic management, no park and ride, fines left right and centre, poor bus and train services and we can start to put the jigsaw together and see exactly why Brighton is becoming a no go area.
This city needs it’s visitors, yet this council wants to push for a car free city. The very layout of our city means they can’t have both. People need to travel through the city to get to the very attractions they want people to visit, yet stopping them doing so.
Sheer poor thought and brainless ideas that are a burden to this once great city.
The only way to save this utterly stupid idea is by fixing a huge pod to the top (that can actually be used for something and make money 24-7). Then use the current (small) pod as the lift to the large fixed one. Just needs support for the extra weight.
The city could end up with worse if the i360 is sold on.
Removal entirely would prevent ever greater costs for repair or eventual removal and its absence would remove an embarrassment from becoming a more than debt catastrophe.
Call in the fraud investigators.
What happened is criminal.