LOCAL NEWS

i360 NIGHTMARE

An urgent review of the i360’s debt is under way after the tourist attraction failed to make its recent loan repayment. Brighton & Hove City Council’s external auditor Grant Thornton supported the urgent review in a report to the council’s audit and standards committee. In the annual external auditor’s report, GT said that, despite restructuring the loan last year, the i360 could not make its £900,000 December payment. This suggested that the loan cost was a more significant risk and could affect the council’s finances over the medium to long term. In 2014, the council agreed to borrow £36.2 million from the Public Works Loan Board to lend to i360 Ltd. Interest has pushed the figure to £43 million.

The loan proposal was supported by the former Green council leader Jason Kitcat and the former Conservative opposition leader Geoffrey Theobald with not a mention as to whether the City’s residents agreed. The secrecy of the original business plan was challenged by former Argus reporter John Keenan in 2016. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), which mediates Freedom of Information request disputes, agreed that the details should be released. But the council then splashed £36,000 of taxpayer cash to fight the Information Watchdog in the High Court where it won the right to redact key financials before disclosing the document to the public.

Now revealed, these financial figures were vastly overestimated and, after years of missed payments, the 530-foot seafront attraction now owes about £47 million –a bill of at least £133 for every person in Brighton & Hove. The council tried to keep the plan secret as it was, in fact, a total fabrication and councillors were hoodwinked and ultimately, were too embarrassed to let the plan be made public.

Said councillors should be hauled into court to account for their stupidity.

MAYO WYNNE BAXTER ACHIEVES B-CORP

Full-service law firm Mayo Wynne Baxter, as part of legal and professional services group Ampa, has been awarded B-Corporation certification. Organisations with certified B-Corp status are legally required to consider the impact of business decisions on their people, customers, suppliers, communities and the environment, ensuring a balance between purpose, people and profit.

Salary Plunge

Workers in London and the South East have seen the biggest falls in Britain in real annual wages in the last 12 years, according to a new analysis. It shows that between 2010 and 2022, average pay fell in the capital by six per cent – or £2,663, taking into account inflation. This was during the period which included major economic blows including Brexit and the Covid pandemic which hit the City particularly hard. Only the South East saw a bigger drop, of seven per cent – or £2,725 –in the painful cost-of-living squeeze.