Cllr Greg Morgan writes "In his letter on the purchase of Market Walk, in response to my previous, Cllr Bradley notes that I have indeed been present at the cross-party steering committee and am therefore well placed to understand that there is no plan beyond the medium term as to how the 50 year debt on the council tax payers of Chorley will be supported other than to hope that shopping continues in its present form for the full 50 years.
At the Council budget meeting of Tuesday 25th Feb Cllr Bradley tried to support his argument by comparing the purchase of Market Walk with the purchase of my house. This comparison exemplifies his poor grasp of the issues involved. Whilst my house has a reasonably reliable value as bricks and mortar, the whole point of the Market Walk purchase is that The Council has bought a business, paying not only for the bricks and mortar, but the income from the business also. The future of this business cannot be predicted in our uncertain world over a period of 50 years and hence exposes the people of Chorley to financial risk that is difficult to calculate.
Whilst Cllr Bradley was willing to hold a consultation of the people of Chorley, albeit a spurious one, on the spending of £1M on projects, he still sees no reason to carry out a similar exercise on the spending of £24M on Market Walk.
The £1M in question is the surplus money from the New Homes Bonus that Cllr Bradley still insists on describing as a ‘windfall’. It is my understanding that the only threat to the future availability of these funds would be the election of a Labour government. Presumably Cllr Bradley has already discounted this possibility for 2015 as his only concrete plan to deal with the council predicted deficit to 2016/17 of £2.2M is to fill the gap with the New Homes Bonus."