To receive any public questions, statements or petitions submitted in accordance with the Constitution. Further information on the requirements for submitting these is available to view at the following link:-
https://democracy.bcpcouncil.gov.uk/ieListMeetings.aspx?CommitteeID=151&Info=1&bcr=1
The deadline for the submission of public questions is midday on Friday 31 October 2025 [midday 3 clear working days before the meeting].
The deadline for the submission of a statement is midday on Wednesday 5 November 2025 [midday the working day before the meeting].
The deadline for the submission of a petition is Thursday 23 October 2025 [10 working days before the meeting].
Minutes:
The following public issues were received in relation to the draft - Internal Audit - BCP FuturePlaces (FPL) Investigation Report (Scope items 1 to 8):
Public Questions from Mr Ian Redman:
Question 1.
BEIS said the council had discretion on how to award Additional Restrictions Grants but that these funds were to be used "to support businesses severely impacted by coronavirus restrictions and the rise of the omicron variant" - which Future Places, as a new company, was definitely not! Future Places were urged to apply for a £100,000 ARG grant by "the BCP City Panel". Who were members of the "city panel" and which council officers approved the grant?
Response:
The criteria for latter elements of the ARG grant (schemes 3 and 4) could fit wider criteria as set out in government guidance
Point 1 on page 4: This guidance is intended to support Local Authorities in administering the Additional Restrictions Grant (ARG) to provide direct business grants and wider business support.
Point 21 on page 5: With the exception of the third top-up payment, Local Authorities can use ARG funding for business support activities. This may primarily take the form of discretionary grants, but Local Authorities could also use this funding for wider business support activities.
And Point 34 on Page 8: Previous guidance for the Additional Restrictions Grant indicated that businesses must have been trading before relevant restrictions were introduced in order to be eligible. This is no longer the case. All businesses that are trading and meet other eligibility criteria may apply to receive funding under this scheme. There is no starting date from which businesses must have been trading in order to qualify for grant funding.
This was all set out in the Council’s published schemes, which were all approved by Corporate Management Board.
Entities who were involved in the City Panel are shown in the snip at 5.10.2 of the report. The BCP Council Leader and Deputy Leader were also invited.
Officers who approved the grant on the Council’s award panel were the Director of Development and Director of Destination and Culture, supported by two officers from Economic Development who were advisors to the panel.
Question 2.
Once awarded to Future Places, the £100,000 grant was transferred to a separate company, 1HQ Limited, so that it could carry out a "city identity study". The resulting report by 1HQ Limited is available online, and consists of 35 pages, 15 of which are photographs of Bournemouth or full-sized page numbers. The observations in the report aren't particularly striking either. Whose job was it, at Future Places or BCP Council, to ensure quality control and value for money, especially in this scenario, where £100,000's worth of work had supposedly been undertaken?
Response:
As with all the ARG grants, the responsibility for delivering the outcomes and outputs stipulated in application forms was with the applicant, in this case, Future Places. Future Places were also required to provide a monitoring report detailing how the outcomes and outputs were delivered. All reports needed to be sent to the Council’s Economic Development team as part of the grant conditions. The monitoring report for this grant was received.
Question 3.
The timeline mentions several whistleblowing reports from the executives at Future Places but none from council officers. Were any concerns raised by council officers about Future Places, such as - the vast sums being allocated to the company - total project cost for the Poole Civic Centre alone was estimated at £51.8 million - the cost of projects not taken forward would have to be written-off - providing a loan that had no hope of being repaid (per the external audit report), etc. -If yes, when were these concerns raised, what exactly were they, and what action was taken? Concerns about the Bayside Restaurant were raised at the outset by council officers but ignored by management.
Response:
Various concerns were raised by Council officers, the report identifies a number of these concerns, for example those highlighted at 3.2.20 and 3.5.9. The concerns were voiced to the shareholder representative and it was agreed that a review after the local elections to align the Council’s Corporate Strategy, the Council’s Commissioning Plan for FPL and the FPL Business Plan was required.
Public Questions from Mr Alex McKinstry:
Question 1.
Can you confirm that the date of the email in paragraph 3.1.14 is without doubt 2 June 2021? This seems remarkably early. Amongst other things the email - reproduced in full on page 185 - describes a decision made the previous Friday to appoint "a named individual" to the managing director role; the previous Friday would have been 28 May, at which point the MD-to-be had been working for the Council for a matter of days. (Her earliest expense claim was 18 May.) Can you double-check the date, therefore?
Response:
The email referenced at paragraph 3.1.14 is without doubt dated, Wednesday 2 June, 2021, time stamped 11.40am.
Question 2.
Where exactly does the quote come from in Paragraph 6.2.3, informally defining the role of the shareholder representative?
Response:
The quote at 6.2.3 is the judgement of the investigator based on all the evidence gathered including from parties involved in the investigation.
Public Statements from Mr Ian Redman:
Statement 1
Council's should not benefit from Additional Restrictions Grants per BEIS and ARG guidance. section 26 of ARG guidance says “All funding provided under this scheme should provide direct support to businesses". The £100,000 grant to Future Places, paid to 1HQ for a placemaking study, must have breached these guidelines. The Future Places MD said, in the progress report, that the grant met "two core objectives" - "To articulate for BCP Council a fresh and distinctive narrative", and identifying "place values" for the URC. The award panel, similarly, said: "It could be significantly beneficial to BCP and aligns with aims and objectives of the new EDS and Big Plan". The beneficiaries of this project were clearly the Council and its URC, and this should be reported as a misuse of public funds under the Local Government Finance Act.
Statement 2
The Future Places report overlooks many questions from residents (page 164 onwards). One key element missing from the report, who introduced Gail Mayhew to the Council; were procurement rules and financial regulations followed; who signed the purchase order for her initial consultancy services; and whether alternative quotes were sought. Other outstanding questions include the loan agreement - whether it was right for the CFO to allow it, given the significant risk of default; the shareholder role - whether the CEO failed to put robust scrutiny in place; and why Grant Thornton never raised the alarm until it was too late. A major concern is why the council's Leadership didn't commission this investigation when it was first suggested at Council in November 2023. Memories were still fresh; documents locatable; and councillors and officers still around to be held accountable. This report is two years late.
The Chair read out the following point of clarification in relation to Statement 2:
“The Council wishes to clarify matters that it considers to be misleading in Mr Redman’s statement number two. The loan agreement was agreed by Cabinet and then Council, the CFO’s role was to highlight the financial implications and risk, which are set out in the report. It was not the role or responsibility of Grant Thornton to raise the alarm on matters pertaining to specific council decisions. Grant Thornton raised concerns form a wider governance perspective in their annual VFM opinion at the earliest opportunity with regard to FuturePlaces Ltd.”
Public Statements from Mr Alex McKinstry:
Statement 1.
It's disgraceful that a £100,000 Covid support grant was used to fund a "city identity study" - 35 pages, of which half were illustrations. But look closer. The application, and financial waiver, state FuturePlaces was "requested" to apply for this grant by "the BCP City Panel". Also on this panel was the Ceuta Group - whose subsidiary, Ceuta Secretaries Ltd, was secretary to 1HQ Ltd, the company that did the study and was indeed sole bidder for this £100,000 project. They shared the same registered office and director. Other panel members included Bourne Asset Management Ltd, whose director went on to become de facto FuturePlaces landlord; and a great many concerns from residents about that particular matter are cited on page 169. The Council's dealings with this "city panel" need examining, as several threads of Drew Mellor's administration were intertwined with it.
Statement 2.
Paragraph 5 3 10 et seq. considers "THE STEWARDSHIP INITIATIVE" - seemingly an unincorporated business, of which the FuturePlaces MD was co-founder. This connection wasn't mentioned in the 2021 business plan (which is now publicly available, incidentally), or at any Council meeting, despite the Initiative gaining potential kudos from "the Stewardship kitemark", which would be applied to FuturePlaces projects. This should have been put front and centre by administration politicians ...... likewise the arrangement at 5 3 14, whereby 1% of property sales on FuturePlaces sites would be paid into a "Stewardship fund". That detail was buried in the appendix to an exempt document. The two co-founders of the Stewardship Initiative had senior posts in companies awarded £187,000 by FuturePlaces, and doubtless the Committee will examine whether overlapping interests were declared; to what effect; and what Chinese walls were in place.
Statement 3.
Reserved Matter 39 of the Shareholder's Agreement restricted approval of any bonus, profit-sharing or share option scheme to Council; and this was serious stuff, as a share option scheme would have removed the company's Teckal status. Of course this matter should have been referred to full Council, therefore. Ditto Reserved Matter 40 - the actual bonus payments - given the size of these payments, concerns about the company's underperformance (with business cases delayed), plus other controversies: indeed, I doubt whether the 2023 bonuses would have passed full Council, given the changed administration. The shareholder representative - who had no voting rights - sitting mutely at related board meetings, was no substitute for the full Council endorsement that these matters surely warranted. The Committee should therefore reject Paragraph 5 1 9, and find that the Shareholder's Agreement was breached in respect of Reserved Matters 39 and 40.
Statement from Mr Adam Sofianos:
Ever since the creation of FuturePlaces, the project has been scrutinised and criticised by local residents.
That criticism has been entirely validated.
But history should also note how people connected to FuturePlaces tried to deflect and deter this scrutiny.
In a 2023 Council meeting, then-leader Phil Broadhead controversially dismissed residents asking questions about FuturePlaces as “election candidates”. Earlier, in a 2022 committee session, one of his councillors condemned public criticism as “hearsay, misinformation and fake news,”, while the FuturePlaces managing director complained about “kangaroo court commentary”.
Yet scrutiny was, and remains, utterly justified.
And now, as councillors contemplate what to do next, a critical question must be answered.
What actions will this Council take to ensure that something as damaging as FuturePlaces can never happen again?
Only when that objective has been met, can Council look those residents in the eye, and tell them the case is closed.