COUNCIL homes that Thurrock Council paid more than £3.5 million to buy have stood empty for months, despite a council home waiting list running into the thousands.

And mystery surrounds the financial background to the deal – and other multi-million pound property purchases by the authority.

Planning permission for 16 flats, originally destined for the commercial market and built by Fobbing-based property developer Paul O`Nion through his company AMD Property Limited, were submitted in early 2020 – after an initial proposal for a block of nine one bed flats and seven two bed flats was rejected.

The revised plan for eight one bed and eight two bed homes was approved in January 2021 and demolition of the former garage on the site and the new building construction began.

As part of the planning permission, Mr O'nion's company was required to make a payment of £40,000 to the council to offset a requirement to make 35 per cent of the new homes 'affordable'.

The building appears not to have gone to the private market. Instead it was directly purchased by Thurrock Council in a deal apparently first brokered early last year.

The council says the contract for the purchase of the block, known as Jacqueline Court, was completed in November 2022 when a final payment of £3,547,000 was made. Earlier the council says it had made payments of £165,000 in June 2022, £7,200 in November 2022.

None of those figures correspond with entries in the council's published ledger of payments for June and November last year.

Jacqueline Court

There is a record of a payment to property lawyers and transaction management company Winkworth Sherwood of £3,932,230 in November which appears the nearest correlation.

Winkworth Sherwood are among a number of companies involved in significant land and building transactions amounting to tens of millions of pounds – some linked with the council's agreement with Phi Capital and its financial partner Topland Group to buy and lease homes on its behalf.

Thurrock Nub News has reported several times on the deal, which is shrouded in secrecy by the council, and there are no detailed records of reports about the many dozens of transactions the authority has been involved in.

Just some of the concerns about the deal are expressed in this story from last April.

However, the council's purchase of Jacqueline Court was not part of the Phi Capital deal, former cabinet housing portfolio Cllr Luke Spillman told Nub News recently.

He said it was a direct purchase financed from the authority reserves in its Housing Revenue account.

Cllr Spillman had been hugely upbeat about the Phi deal, saying he believed it was a great and innovative scheme worked out by the council's financial advisors and he championed it. He described it as a 'fantastic bit of business'.

No entry to new homes for those on borough homes waiting list despite council spending millions.

However, the council itself has always been shy of talking about the deal – which was only brought to the local public's attention by an exclusive Nub News story in August 2021.

And since that story, the council has been reticent to promote any aspects of what Cllr Spillman clearly believed was a showcase policy. There is virtually no coherent trail of what properties have been involved in the Phi trail, with many payments ranging from a few thousand to multiple millions of pounds scattered across the council's purchase ledgers just under the heading of 'Acquisition of Land and Buildings'.

Nub News has approached Cllr Spillman and the council many times for release of more details about the scheme and where the money – most of it borrowed – has gone.

Indeed we asked Cllr Spillman about two other significant transaction transactions from early last year.

One was to Winckworth Sherwood for £4,127,578.65 and another to another legal firm, Trowers & Hamlins, for £4,694,366.16. Trowers & Hamlins are the international law firm that brokered the original deal between Thurrock Council and Phi.

Cllr Spillman said he did not know what those payments were for.

And Thurrock Council has declined to respond to a request to explain what those payments related to.

At the most recent presentation of the list of Housing Revenue Account Phi property purchases in March this year, the current finance portfolio holder Cllr Graham Snell, presented a report that showed that in the year to date the council has spent £12,058,000. That was against a budgeted spend of £3,531,000. However, there was no detail given or discussion about why - at a time of acute financial crisis, the council had overspent its budget by more than £8.5 million!

Despite being a staunch advocate of the council's housing strategy which bore his signature and for which he claimed great pride and satisfaction, complementing senior officers, Cllr Spillman recently stood down from his role as portfolio holder for housing and followed up with an astonishing attack on senior officers.

Cllr Spillman said he was quitting the front bench of the ruling group he had defected to from the now defunct Thurrock Independent Group because officers were deliberately 'misleading cabinet, council and the residents we represent."

He said he had reached the conclusion there was "breath-taking incompetence that has plagued the senior leadership of this council for so long.  This incompetence has undermined the democratic process."

Yet he still believes the council's plans to spend tens of millions of new housing stock through external firms, a plan dreamed up by those same officers and the same senior leadership, pass muster.

Meanwhile, those 16 flats in Corringham stand empty, and Mr O'nion even had another council windfall when it was agreed he did not have to fulfil the payment of £40,000 for the affordable housing quotient.

None of the planning decisions about the Jacqueline Court project have ever gone before councillors for debate. They have all been decided by officers behind closed doors.

Empty affordable homes at Stanford Meadow.

And while the waiting list continues to rise for new homes, other affordable homes commitments made by developers as they build across the borough remain unfulfilled.

For example a completed block of flats designated for affordable rental housing built by Persimmon on the Stanford Meadows development remain empty. The rest of the homes, mostly sold on the commercial market, are occupied.

The issue of the empty block, which Nub News believes was sold on by Persimmon to Sage Housing has been raised with Thurrock Council, which says it is 'investigating' why the affordable homes quota has not been fulfilled in terms of occupancy.

The policy of Persimmon 'selling on' its affordable housing blocks in not new – as this report from Lancashire illustrates.

Cllr Spillman was also the champion of the shambolic scheme to build an extension to the civic offices in Grays and build new affordable flats on space vacated by moving the civic chamber.

The building of the new 'town hall' took place – with the total cost still a heavy guarded secret by the council though it is sure to surpass the 'budget envelope of £10 million – while the vacated offices stand empty with no coherent plan for them now after the commercial property market turned its back on the unworkable proposal. Cllr Spillman's much vaunted scheme is in ruins, another legacy of a flawed regeneration strategy.

In response to a request for a reason why the brand news homes on Lampits Hill are still not occupied, this is the full statement, issued three weeks ago by Thurrock Council: "The contract for the purchase of Jacqueline Court in Lampits Hill, Stanford-le-Hope was completed in November 2022 and the final payment made then. In total the cost of the property was £3,719,200 – covered in three payments: £165,000 in June 2022, £7,200 in November 2022 and the payment of the final balance of £3,547,000, also in November 2022.

"Although the contract for purchase was completed in November 2022, there were still works to carried out on the units to make them habitable. Those works have now been completed and as soon as utility accounts have been transferred to the council the flats will be ready for occupation. It is expected the units will be occupied in the coming weeks."

The flats are still empty.