EXCLUSIVE by EWAN LAMB
The price paid by Scottish Borders Council for the last 110 acres of the Lowood country estate, near Melrose, was more than eight thousand per cent per acre higher than the sum budgeted for 47 years ago when 190 acres of the same farm was acquired for development.
Information found in a long neglected archive of files shows that in 1972, following a five year legal battle between Roxburgh County Council and reluctant seller Constance Hamilton the local authority of the day had allocated £200,000 to pay for 192 acres.
The money set aside for what amounted to more than half of Lowood Farm - the fields were required to allow a start to be made on the development of Tweedbank village - equated to £1,041 per acre.
The figures were contained in a report to county council members in October 1972 after Mrs Hamilton and her husband Ian, a retired architect, agreed to abandon their long-running fight to hang on to the portion of their agricultural holding which had been made the subject of a Compulsory Purchase Order. The couple claimed they were 'surrendering' because of crippling legal fees.
According to the Bank of England's inflation calculator £200,000 in 1972 would have had an equivalent value of £2,592,000 by 2018.
In late 2018 Scottish Borders Council agreed to pay Lowood's owners at the time - Alexander and Erica Hamilton - £9,600,000 (£9.6 million) so that hundreds of additional houses can be built on the estate's parkland, thereby boosting Tweedbank's size and population, and hopefully helping to take advantage of the Borders Railway terminus in the village.
This latest transaction with Constance Hamilton's successors works out at £87,272 per acre, an increase of 8,283% over the price per acre assigned by the county council in 1972, and equivalent to an average rise of 176% per annum in the 47 year gap between the two land transactions, both funded by taxpayers' money. An annual inflation rate of that magnitude would even put Zimbabwe or Venezuela to shame!
It has been claimed by critics of the 2018 deal entered into by SBC that the amount of money paid for the outstanding 110 acres of Lowood was excessive, and represented a speculative gamble with public finances.
However, the local authority says it believes the decision to acquire the land to be 'robust' and economically sound, allowing it to control the pace of development in a key Central Borders location.
At the same time SBC has refused to reveal details of the valuation placed on their targeted purchase by the District Valuer, the independent public official who deems how much plots of land are worth.
And elected members have been warned by at least one high ranking council officer they must not divulge details of the council's dealings with the Hamiltons and their agents under any circumstances. It is therefore difficult to judge whether the agreed price was 'over the odds' or represented value for taxpayers' money.
It was recently confirmed SBC paid for the land via Lowood Estates Ltd. and Genesis Trust and Corporate Services, both entities registered in George Town, Cayman Islands. The payments were made after SBC handed an agency more than £3,000 to check out the veracity of the two offshore businesses.
After transaction tax of more than £400,000 plus other fees, and interest charges of three quarters of a million pounds are added the total bill for the public purse will be some £11 million. But when questions were asked and information was requested Mark Rowley, a senior Executive member at SBC dismissed those who challenged the council's decision on Lowood as 'mischief makers'.
The cost of developing Lowood's parkland, including land acquisition costs, has been estimated at around £90 million.
Back in 1972 the county council's contribution towards the construction of a planned one thousand new homes plus industrial premises and services was £1,740,500 as its share of an overall estimated investment of £12 million with most of the cash coming from Scottish agencies of the UK Government.
At the outset the intention was to build 800 houses for rent between 1973 and 1977 with the Scottish Special Housing Association [SSHA] scheduled to complete 200 new homes in 1974, then 300 in 1975 and a further 300 in 1976 at an overall cost of £5.3 million. Private building firms were to weigh in with the other 200 dwellings.
The industrial expansion elements of the project were forecast to create 700 jobs with the vast majority of new housing tenancies on offer to incoming workers. Despite the five year delay to accommodate legal proceedings the scale of the Tweedbank scheme was still considered to be necessary to kick start economic activity in the area.
NEXT: HOW THE TWEEDBANK MASTERPLAN OF 1972 PANNED OUT
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