The businessman and landowner who received £9.6 million from Scottish Borders Council (SBC) in November 2018 after agreeing to sell his country estate near Melrose for development has died in Jamaica, aged 87.
Alexander Vereker Hamilton, whose mother Constance waged a bitter battle with Roxburgh County Council during the 1960s in a bid to prevent compulsory purchase of a chunk of Lowood Estate, is survived by his wife Erica whom he married at Bowden Kirk in the Borders in 2009. He also had three children by his first wife Sarah who predeceased him.
The multi-million pound deal which allowed SBC to acquire the remaining 110 acres of Lowood to facilitate the building of hundreds of houses brought strong criticism. The critics renewed their onslaught when it was revealed the £9.6 million had been deposited with two Cayman Islands-based companies, Lowood Estates Ltd and Genesis Trust and Corporate Services. And the council relied on legal advice from a firm of lawyers based in the faraway tax haven.
A confidential report presented to elected councillors at SBC on March 29th 2018 set out the terms and conditions drawn up by the local authority's representatives and agents acting for Mr and Mrs Hamilton.
Under the terms of sale Mr Hamilton was to be granted lifetime occupation of Lowood House and nearby Spruce Cottage, home of the family's gardener.
The report stated: "Mrs Hamilton and the estate gardener to be given an additional maximum period of 24 months occupancy of Lowood House and Spruce Cottage following the death of Mr Hamilton."
The price agreed with the Hamiltons' agent was given in the report as £9.750 million with the council to pay the seller's legal and professional costs.
Yet only about a year earlier when the Border Telegraph revealed the council had its eyes on Lowood as a key site for economic and residential growth in the Central Borders, Mrs Erica Hamilton told Telegraph journalist Andrew Keddie:
·
F "For a negotiated sale to take place, there has to be a willing buyer and a willing seller, but I can assure you we will not be negotiating with anyone.
· “Lowood is not for sale and should any attempt be made at compulsory purchase, it is not a venture which will be met with success. Legislation has altered considerably, thank goodness.”
·
S She claimed news of the council’s decision had caused “distress and embarrassment” to her family and said she had been contacted by tenants who were “seriously worried” about their tenure and their future.
After the transaction was completed SBC was forced to provide figures of the additional costs they had incurred as a result of the Lowood acquisition. The final bill was in the region of £11 million.
Costs to be met by local taxpayers on top of the £9.6 million price tag included legal fees £72,000; surveyors' fees £80,900; VAT on fees £30,000; land and buildings transaction tax £422,000; valuation reports £16,000 and £780,000 for the cost of borrowing.
Last year Mrs Hamilton was a leading player in a protest campaign which tried to prevent the siting of a dolphin attraction in Discovery Bay, Jamaica.
According to reports in Jamaican media the objectors claim that Discovery Bay is a fish sanctuary and excrement from dolphins will not be
quickly washed out into the open sea, posing a health threat to swimmers and
the marine environment.
Mrs Erica Hamilton has been named as a defendant in a defamation action raised in the Jamaican courts by the operators of the dolphin attraction.
The press reports say Guardsman
Hospitality, which operates the Puerto Seco beach park, retained the services
of a team of attorneys to sue Ms Lee Arbouin
and Mrs Hamilton citing loss of revenue and damage to its reputation due
to the spread of "libellous information".
According to the court documents, Guardsman is
seeking among other things, aggravated damages, special damages in the sum of $1.9 million and an injunction restraining the protest committee and its agents 'from
publishing or causing to be published further defamatory words'.
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