A Labour member of the council has formally requested that the lessons learned document regarding the i360 financing be discussed at an upcoming meeting of Brighton and Hove City Council’s audit, standards and general purposes committee.
Councillor Liz Loughran submitted an official request for the document to be added to the agenda for the next gathering of the committee, which took place on Tuesday, April 21.
Despite earlier promises from the council that the independent assessment carried out by the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy would be shared, it was not actually delivered to the meeting.
Cllr Loughran noted that the document addressed several important areas falling under the committee’s remit, including oversight arrangements, procurement practices, financial projections and risk handling.
The failure to present the document publicly drew sharp remarks from the Labour deputy leader of the council, Jacob Taylor, who suggested that the committee chair, Green councillor Pete West, was displaying resentment about the report’s contents.
Following Cllr Loughran’s submission, Cllr West stated that the document remained unfinished.
One of Cllr West’s objections centred on the fact that the assessment was compiled without reaching out to those individuals who were involved in the original decision to arrange a £36 million loan from the Public Works Loan Board to i360 developer Marks Barfield.
Responding to Cllr Loughran, he stated that he had some concerns because he did not consider the document to be finalized. He expressed the view that it had not yet been completed.
Following talks with the council’s head of legal services Elizabeth Culbert, Cllr West indicated he would contact Cllr Loughran once the agenda for the subsequent meeting, scheduled for Tuesday, June 23, had been prepared.
The CIPFA document, which cost £5,000 to produce, found that the council had been presented with overly optimistic estimates regarding visitor numbers, income and profitability.
The council concealed the business case from residents when it approved the £36 million loan to Marks Barfield, citing the need to protect commercial information.
When the loan terms were finalized in 2014, the minority Green administration pushed through the plans with backing from some members of the opposition Conservative group, though not all of them.
The Labour group, which held the fewest seats at that time, voted against the loan.
The council is now paying off the remaining sum of the £36 million Public Works Loan Board loan at roughly £2.2 million annually over the next 15 years until 2041.
The i360 stopped operating in December 2024 after the company owning the seaside tower entered administration, making more than 100 people redundant just before the festive period.
The total amount owed had risen to £51 million, including interest, when the council erased the debt early last year. This allowed the business’s administrators to sell the i360.
Leisure company Nightcap bought the i360 for £150,000 from the administrators at Interpath Limited in February last year.
Last May, Nightcap confirmed it would comply with the planning condition linked to the i360’s permission requiring 1 per cent of ticket revenues to be paid to the council.