More budgetary failures for Oldham Council’s capital development program.

It wasn’t enough for budget challenged Oldham Council to spend circa half a million of public funds purchasing a three quarters empty Metropolitan Place in Oldham Town Centre last September. They also went on to allocate an undisclosed refurbishment grant for the office space and building which has now been identified as insufficient. Their financial solution is pooling of the refurbishment and repair budgets for Metropolitan Place and the Old Bank buildings at Mumps or to you and me rob Peter to pay Paul. This is all being done so the fourth floor can be occupied by the Greater Manchester Waste Disposal Authority (yes another public sector department of local government) who already occupy offices at Medtia Chambers on Barn Street just five minutes away. These are the Town Centre tactics Oldham Council employ again and again spending vast sums of public resources or creating many millions in public sector debt to house public sector departments and partners as they did with First Choice Homes Oldham new offices on Union Street all to hide the fact private developers will not take investment risk in Oldham. Next on the cards is housing at Prince’s Gate which was identified in Oldham Council’s own cabinet report as having such low profitability margins at the point of sale that private developers would not be willing to invest money to develop the scheme.