[Acrylic-bob]

The sale of Council, and thus Public, assets is a complex issue. If you will recall the reports in the Observer some weeks back, it was stated that The Market Hall would be offered on a 125 year lease. This would mean that the lease could be either bought outright - big bucks now, or could be paid for yearly - little bucks once a year.

The Town Hall is already in the hands of a charity. I am not sure what the arrangement is there but I would imagine that it is a way round the borrowing restrictions placed on councils by the government.

I remember, years ago, I used to live in Islington in North London, then one of the looniest of the loony left boroughs. As a result of the cap on borrowing, intended by the tory government to rein in the spending of local councils, Islington under Margaret Hodge found itself with massive debts and resorted to "lease-back" as a way of raising cash to fund it's trendy excesses. The Town Hall was sold to a merchant bank in the city from whom it was rented by the council. The agreement was for a fixed term, five or ten years, I can't remember which, at the end of which the council agreed to buy back the building at the market rate. The assumption was that an incoming Labour government would help out with the buy back. John Major's election success came as a bitter disappointment to the council. When the Blair Government eventually came to office it was at some pains to point out that it had no intention of helping the loony left councils with public money. What the situation in Islington is now I do not know, but I imagine that their debt is somewhere in the stratosphere by now.

In this light, one wonders how much of the £60 Million debt that HBC has been able to rack up is down to the policies of the previous labour administration, under George Slynn, and their attempts to get around rate capping?