by NIGEL WARD

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On Wednesday 24th April 2019, at a time when the East Riding of Yorkshire and Scarborough Borough Conservative Groups stand in utter disarray, retired Cottingham developer Mr Peter ROBINSON – well known to regular readers for his courageous and sustained attempt to call to account outgoing East Riding of Yorkshire Council Leader, Councillor Stephen PARNABY [Con.] and his Director of Planning & Economic Regeneration, Mr Alan MENZIES – published an ULTIMATUM under the above banner.

It is understood that Mr ROBINSON’s ULTIMATUM will expire at close-of-play (i.e. 5:00pm) on Wednesday 1st May 2019 – that is to say, on the eve of election day.

TO:

Cllr. Stephen Parnaby, Alan Menzies, Caroline Lacey, Mathew Buckley, Chief Constable Lee Freeman, Commissioner Keith Hunter

Dear All

Bridlington Golf Club – 7 DAYS to EXPLAIN

Your joint inability to explain either your involvement in this blatantly corrupt, still secret, deal or your lack of any action against those responsible will result in more direct approach to drawing this scandal, and your part in it, to the attention of the general public.

It is now over 12 months since a whistle blower disclosed this 2014 secret deal, during this time an abundance of points have been raised by several sources, so far there has not been a single credible answer to any of these questions. Suspiciously even elected  councillors sitting as members of the Audit Committee, whose role it is to scrutinize, have been refused access to the facts.

I would draw your attention, especially, to the still unanswered questions in my last 3 letters, 10th February, 10th March and 2nd April 2019, copies attached, as summarized in the final paragraph of the 2nd April letter reproduced below:-

THE FACTS REMAIN

£1,000,000 (minimum) MISSING FROM PUBLIC FUNDS

If we had given away the golf club FREE OF CHARGE to the members whilst withholding possession of the 16th hole for sale to the highest bidder we would still have at least £1m more for the public purse than Councillor Parnaby`s corrupt deal with his friends and associates.

Now tell the public why he is not being charged, they have a right to know.

Yours sincerely

Peter Robinson

The background is succinctly set out in the following Private Eye article:

The following Yorkshire Post article is also of interest:

BBC Look North report 19th March 2018:

• an “In My View” article by NIGEL WARD, updating readers on the continuing attempts to hold ERYC Leader Councillor Stephen PARNABY to account.

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Mr Richard WILSON – familiar to regular readers as a fellow investigator who has long sought to bring ERYC Leader Steve PARNABY [Con.] to account – has challenged Mr PARNABY to stop skulking behind the ranked masses of his Officers and personally respond to questions, concerns and allegations of corrupt Planning decisions on-going for some years. Here’s betting that he won’t.

I here reproduce Mr WILSON’s email to the Leader:

Subject: ERYC: Corruption and collusion at County Hall, Beverley. Further information
Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2018 14:54:32 +0000 (UTC)
From: Richard Wilson
To: councillor.parnaby@eastriding.gov.uk, mathew.buckley@eastriding.gcsx.gov.uk, caroline.lacey@eastriding.gov.uk, Nigel Ward, Peter Robinson, northhull@humberside.pnn.police.uk, casework@ico.org.uk, Graham Stuart MP <graham@grahamstuart.com>, Andy Strangeway, The Rt Hon Sir Greg Knight MP <sothcott@parliament.uk>, The Rt. Hon. David Davis MP <david.davis.mp@parliament.uk>, Alan Menzies <alan.menzies@eastriding.gov.uk>

Dear  Councillor PARNABY,    (FAO Mr Parnaby personally, please)

I write in support of Mr Ward’s email to Mr Buckley (below) and will be interested to see his reply.

The time for honest and properly evidenced information from ERYC came long ago and as you know, others are monitoring these exchanges.

I see Mr Ward asks for Mr Buckley’s personal response.

I now ask for yours.

You are the council leader and chief local government decision-maker in the East Riding. Like the prime minister, you chair a cabinet, and you have chosen to remain in this position for many years.

Yet, astonishingly, and maintaining complete silence, you have handed over to council officers – civil servants –

a) The entire task of explaining all the planning decisions you and your councillor-supporters have made  since ERYC’s inauguration to the present –

as well as

b) The defence of your personal conduct.

Those monitoring this correspondence will be asked to judge whether or not this is how things should work.

A council legal officer is not your defence solicitor in matters of your personal conduct in office, and if s/he acts in this way, can be accused of collusion with that behaviour.

ERYC has not contested my statement that senior council officers have a duty to the electors, and that includes warning and advising councillors about such matters as duly observing planning and legal requirements and government directives, the Nolan principles of good government, and matters of personal conduct in office.

ERYC has been given multiple opportunities to contest my statement that from ERYC’s founder-CEO and founder-senior legal officer onwards, that necessary advice appears not to have been given, and has not done so..

ERYC has not contested my frequently-stated view that from ERYC’s inauguration to 2016, planning decisions made by you and your colleagues – with no evidenced planning explanation at the time – visibly diverge from ERYC’s inherited and legally adopted pre-2016 Local Plan, in disregard of planning law which requires that explanation.

Why have you remained silent on the issue of ERYC’s handling of the St William’s College sex abuse case?

I formally request that as council leader you now accept the responsibility that your office carries, of finally and yourself addressing and responding to the many questions that have been put to you concerning a) ERYC’s behaviour and decisions over many years, and b) those concerning your own personal conduct.

Your continuing silence on these matters has come to have meaning.

Yours sincerely,

Richard Wilson

On Sunday, 23 September 2018, 13:12, Nigel Ward wrote (quoted above):

Mr Mathew BUCKLEY – Monitoring Officer and Head of Legal & Democratic Services – ERYC

IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST

Mathew,

As you are aware, I have taken a close interest, over a longish period of time, in the numerous allegations made against your Leader (pro tem), Councillor Stephen PARNABY [Con.], and your Director of Planning & Regeneration, Mr Alan MENZIES. It cannot be gainsaid that there have been plenty.

As you may readily imagine, I have been preparing a definitive article, or series of articles, setting out the whole nine yards, stitch by stitch.

In the light of the correspondence copied below (which, in my view, closely tallies with information from a number of other sources), I feel it is necessary, in order to ensure a fair and balanced representation of the available facts, to allow you an opportunity to address the allegations and the Council’s (including your own) response to the allegations; to give you, in short, this opportunity to provide a comprehensive explanation of the true facts, as you see them, and a clear rebuttal of any allegations which you assert to be ill-founded.

I do appreciate that you have a job to do and that one part of that job is defend the actions of elected members and paid public servants, in the interests of maintaining or restoring public confidence in the Council. Nevertheless, the tangled web that has been woven now threatens to impugn your own integrity.

I therefore appeal to you formally and concisely to state the Council’s position and, beyond that, to provide a personal statement regarding your own part in the matter, that the public may clearly apprehend the realities behind the spin. If all is in order, now is the time to provide a credible, indeed compelling, explanation. It better be good.

In the absence of such frank and honest explanation, the public may be forgiven for surmising that Planning matters at ERYC may have been conducted improperly and for private gain. This, clearly, impinges on the Council’s good standing for, as Transparency International has rightly defined:

• “CORRUPTION is the abuse of entrusted power for private gain”.

I am sure you perceive that any failure to address these issues publicly and in an exhaustive manner will render a great disservice to elected members and employees who have played no part in any putative wrong-doing, but are now at risk of being ‘tarred with the same brush’. As to your own actions, a great deal hangs on whether you have been misled by others or wittingly engaged in a conspiracy. Now is the time to settle that question publicly, lest silence provokes an inference of guilt.

I hope that you will not dissapoint me in this reasonable request for clarity. Thank you.

Kind regards,

Nigel

Following Cottingham developer Peter ROBINSON’s Open Letter to Humberside Police Chief Constable Lee FREEMAN, Mr ROBINSON has since provided the Chief Constable with an up-date, also in the form of an Open Letter circulated to a large number of Councillors, MPs and media outlets:

Mr ROBINSON refers to an article in the Yorkshire Post (27/06/18) by Alexandra WOOD, revisiting the hugely controversial sale by ERYC of the 16th Hole at Bridlington (Belvedere) Golf Club, covered extensively and in some deal by the Enquirer here.

The BBC Look North report cited by Ms WOOD:

Furthermore, at least three other complainants have written to the ERYC, also widely circulated, making similarly serious allegations.

One of these complaints details the sale of a Council-owned farm sold to a buyer closely associated with the ERYC leadership, allegedly at a knock-down price ‘justified’ on grounds of the extreme unlikelihood of Planning consent for future development – consent which nevertheless materialised, despite extant covenants.

Another request for a full investigation by Humberside Police was addressed to Mr Mathew BUCKLEY, ERYC’s Monitoring Officer and Head of Legal & Democratic Services. This included allegations of widespread manipulation of the overlap of the ERYC Local Plan and its predecessor, the Beverley Borough Plan, in order to facilitate multiple lucrative development opportunities in the area to the south of Beverley. This latter complaint includes confirmation from the Information Commissioner’s Office that ERYC had been unlawfully withholding information such as may provide evidence supporting the allegations.

With so many coming forward now to point the finger at ERYC Leader Councillor Stephen PARNABY and some of his closest associates, speculation is mounting that the Leader – who has already announced his intention to stand down when the next election comes around in May 2019 – that the Leader may not return after the summer recess which begins immediately following July’s meeting of Full Council.

Tory sources in the East Riding have been expressing concern that difficulties in securing credible candidates for next May’s local elections are being exacerbated by the fact that the PARNABY allegations are simply not making their way quietly under the carpet, as previously hoped and expected.

In short, the fear is that the Party’s standing in the public perception is being steadily eroded by the water-on-stone persistence of the ROBINSON (and other) allegations and that its rehabilitation cannot be effected until the present scandal is safely tucked away in the misty past.

The Enquirer will continue to report on developments at ERYC without fear or favour and in the public interest.

Readers are left to place the protagonists in the context of news articles.

Enjoy!

[Satire]

by Guest Author, East Riding of Yorkshire campaigner, Andy STRANGEWAY, who is an Independent Councillor at East Riding of Yorkshire Council. This new exclusive information adds to the in-depth coverage of the proposed sale by ERYC of 119 acres of golf course to Bridlington (Belvedere) Golf Club for silly money, featured on the Enquirer here.

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The following is footage taken at Wednesday’s Full Council at County Hall. It shows ERYC Leader Conservative Councillor Stephen Parnaby attempting to convince other members (Councillors) that all is OK with the Golf Club deal.

©Burchill Productions

Who Is Lying?

“..still in negotation” Councillor Parnaby –  County Hall, Beverley – Wednesday 4 April 2018

I can exclusively reveal the following statement issued to members of Bridlington Golf Club at their AGM on Thursday 29 March 2018

“we will start building the hotel in May”

One is saying no deal is done, while the other says they are starting to build in May!

The Golf Club posted on their website that the title had been transferred to them and then removed it. Please click for full information.

Questioning ERYC Officers

Councillor Parnaby states:

“For any members to question their (ERYC officers) professionalism and integrity is absolutely appalling”

Residents elect members to fulfil two fundamental roles (three if Conservative):

1. Represent the Party before residents (Conservative)
2. Represent residents
3. Hold ERYC, including officers, to account

Councillor Parnaby, it is absolutely appalling if members do not hold ERYC officers to account. Your statement, loudly supported by many of your 47 nodding dogs, confirms none of the 48 ERYC Conservative’s are fulfilling their elected duty. That is appalling.

It is appalling that the Planning Committee should show such disrespect for the 19 page and most damning report by the Planning Officer which clearly recommends refusal for a number of reasons.

Once again Councillor “Nodding Dog” Pollard comes to  the rescue. “A lovely lady but she does not know what day it is” Peter Robinson.

I would love to be a fly on the wall during what many of the opposition and past Conservative Councillors have stated are predetermination meetings held before the planning committee meeting.

Menzies – ERYC Local Plan

Why did ERYC Director Alan Menzies attend a meeting with Bridlington Golf Club to discuss a deal which breaches the ERYC Local Plan which he wrote?

Source Of Figures

Councillor Parnaby – This is the source of the figures you are now attempting to discredit.

Private Eye, the nation’s premier satirical exposeur of national and local government dodgy dealings, appears to have homed in on the same concerns as the Enquirer regarding the inexplicable financial machinations behind East Riding of Yorkshire Council’s sale of the Belvedere golf course to Bridlington (Belvedere) Golf Club. Cosy!

EPSON scanner Image

“Bunkergate” – the burgeoning scandal of the mysterious land deal at Bridlington (Belvedere) Golf Club – has attracted the attention of PARNABY/MENZIES bête noir, Cottingham developer Mr Peter ROBINSON, who has published his observations in an Open Letter to BBC Look North investigative journalist Caroline BILTON, plus a closet of Yorkshire MPs and a veritable intrigue of East Riding of Yorkshire Councillors. (Much fun, these collective nouns!).

In other comment, a foursome of Facebookers have defended the deal (though they turn out to be Council or ex-Council employees) and one retired realtor has pointed out that the magnificently-appointed Club House with its ancilliary buildings is alone worth more the unfeasibly low ERYC asking price of £750K – making the course itself a freebie.

Tomorrow’s Annual General Meeting promises to be – extraordinary!

Mr ROBINSON’s latest thrust is reproduced below, followed by the by now well-thumbed minutes of the Bridlington (Belvedere) Golf Extraordinary General Meeting of 31st July 2014.