Swansea Council likes to portray itself as a business-friendly sort of outfit where support is available to multi-million pound companies and single-traders alike. But that became something of a fallacy last night when an item on ITV Wales’s The Ferret exposed how a Swansea businessman had been screwed out of a ground lease and stood to lose everything, including his pension as a result.
The short version is that after making repeated requests over 2 years for a ground lease renewal on his Enterprise Park premises, the poor chap was informed that the lease would not be renewed and that the local authority would be seizing the building he had repaired and extended at his expense. They did however offer to lease the building back to him at an extortionate price. He was apparently informed that the move – which is clearly aimed at raising more revenue - was all to do with a 'change of policy'. How and when the policy was changed and who made this backward and counter-productive decision is not at all clear (a situation all too familiar at Calamity Hall where transparency is as common as fairy-shit).
The actions of the council, as described in the programme, although incredibly short-sighted, are not in themselves illegal. But the fact that they were apparently sanctioned is a clear signal that the controlling Lib Dem administration is not content with just screwing the city centre but intends doing a slash and burn on outlying commercial areas as well.
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