County Councillor, Azhar Ali (Lab), has called for an independent public inquiry into Pendle Borough Council's joint venture with PEARL.
The Labour MP candidate for Pendle said:
"I've tried to, through the Chief Exec, to get the accounts of these PEARL companies, and I get told 'it's a Limited Company' and that it's 'not in the public interest', and I've got the emails from the Council, to reveal those accounts."
"But as a ratepayer, and there's thousands of ratepayers in Pendle, I believe the have an obligation to know how much of their money is being invested in these companies and what the returns are, and what the benefits are."
"At the moment it's shrouded in secrecy. When is Pendle Council going to have an independent enquiry or scrutinise, publicly, how these companies operate and whether they are value for money?"
Earby Councillor John Cooper had earlier raised similar concerns following his request at the previous P&R meeting in January, to received some figures about PEARL's accounts which had not been forthcoming.
Councillor David Whipp (Lib Dem), provided some outline figures regarding PBC and PEARL:
- A loan of £2.24m invested into PEARL by Pendle Council (upto March 2019), equivalent of 30% of the total investment from the group. Barnfield Construction has invested the other 70%, equating to £5.234m. Making a total investment fund of around £7.5m
- From this £7.5m investment it has attracted over £83m of investment in projects around Pendle
- This includes creation of 1000 construction jobs over the past 10 years
- 252 refurbished or new houses on brownfield sites
- 16,375 sq/m of industrial commercial space created
- 73% of the contractors used in these projects are from Pendle