Friday, June 25, 2010

Sandown loan interest charges - a contradiction?

Gurnites will see in the previous article the thoughts of Sheena Baker on the latest twist in the Sandown tale, she feels that interest charges should not be retrospective, she says:

'I have no problem with interest being charged now that the sale of the Sandown land is out of the question but it should be from yesterday at 1% and not retrospectively.'
Now a minute of the Ward Forum/Nairnshire Partnership of 26 August 2009 seems to prove her point. Item 4.3 states:

'WG explained that at the last Ward Forum, Sheena Baker had raised questions regarding the financing of Nairn Community Centre by the Nairn Common Good Fund.

Total cost of £2.814m to date with the capital element to fund the Community Centre being £2.081m. The balance went to pay off the tenant farmer and to cover a range of costs associated with legal fees, marketing fees and other smaller items. To date, no interest has been applied by Highland Council. WG highlighted that interest may be applied in the future but this would be a decision for the full Highland Council.
SB commented that it was concerning that the costs involved were around £3m and the Council appeared no further with securing the sale of Sandown.'

The Document presented to the full council yesterday stated in connection with the £390,000 paid to release the land title: 'This sum was charged to the Nairn Common Good Fund when incurred and already attracts an interest charge from the Council.' Now no mention of that at the Ward Forum meeting. Would this have needed the agreement of the full Council?

Thanks to Sheena for forwarding the relevant minute of the ward forum - here at the Gurn we tend to agree with her - the meter for interest charges should only start running from yesterday and not before.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

As promised, a breakdown of the letter on the Expo.

http://efrafandays.wordpress.com/2010/06/26/scottish-homes-expo-a-response-from-highland-council/