Owens Fall-out Reaches Parliament
HUGH SULLIVAN
Helena Dollimore, MP for Hastings & Rye, secured a ‘debate’ in the House of Commons on 10 March concerning the financial collapse of Owens, the short-lived entertainment centre that traded in the former Debenhams building in the town centre between November 2022 and September 2023. The building has remained vacant and boarded up since.
Complaining that the main owner of CFEC Ltd, the company trading as Owens, had been a £2.4m donor to the Conservative party with close links to offshore accounts in the British Virgin Islands and whose husband had been a former deputy Finance Minister in Putin’s Russia, Ms Dollimore said there were “serious questions to answer” about the £150,000 of taxpayers’ money paid out to the company via the Johnson Government’s Town Deal levelling up initiative in 2023.
Responding to the MP’s speech, Local Government Minister Jim McMahon thanked her for raising the issue – “leading the charge to ensure that not a single penny of Government investment in that town [Hastings] is wasted”. He said that a claim has been lodged with the administrators of CFEC (apparently by Hastings Borough Council though he did not explain on what basis) to recover the lost funding. He also questioned whether the Conservative Party, “given what has now come to light”, might take steps to return all or part of the donations received.
Mr McMahon acknowledged that the decision to invest in the Owens project had been a local one, taken by the council and the Town Deal Board. However, he sidestepped Ms Dollimore’s observations about lack of scrutiny of Town Deal projects arising from the supposed protection of “commercial sensitivities”. Instead, he took the opportunity to herald the continued channelling of government funds into the town, in particular “£20m of funding and support through our new Plan for Neighbourhoods [which] will help build a thriving Hastings, strengthen the local community and allow residents to take their own decisions on things that affect them”.
This Plan for Neighbourhoods [PfN] appears to be a modification of the Sunak government’s Long Term Plan for Towns announced in 2023, comprising the same amount of money for investment in Hastings and likely to be administered by the same board members (save for the substitution of former Conservative MP Sally-Ann Hart by Ms Dollimore as a result of her election in July last year).
But Mr McMahon concluded by taking a swipe at the previous government for tying places up in knots with their short-term initiatives and funding pots, all with very different rules and timetables. “Far from driving growth,” he said, “that bogs places down in bureaucracy, complexity and uncertainty”.
He promised that the current administration would set out an approach that simplifies funding, with less red tape and more local choice in the imminent multi-year spending review. “This Government’s defining mission is growth,” he said, “and we are determined that nowhere will be left behind.”
Speaking to HIP earlier this week, Ms Dollimore pledged a more transparent role within the PfN Board: “Rather than narrow criteria shrouded in mystery as with previous ‘Levelling Up’ projects, I will be asking people how they think the money should be spent, and I urge the new Board to listen to those views. There are a wide range of things that money can be spent on: it might be on repairs to pavements, fixing broken bus shelters, or even exploring reopening St Mary’s in the Castle, or something else! I have opened a consultation form on my website and would encourage local residents to fill it out to let me know what you would like to see in our community.”
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