The long-awaited report by the Task and Finish Group (TFG) of West Berkshire Council’s (WBC’s) Scrutiny Committee into the procurement issues surrounding the Monks Lane Sports Hub project has finally officially seen the light of day. It’s published here as part of the papers for the 16 September meeting of the Resources and Place Scrutiny Committee.

At first glance, it seems to differ in only one major way from the unofficial version I saw earlier this year and which was, for reasons that have never been made completely clear, considered unsuitable. This is the addition of four paragraphs on pp17 and 18 starting with “In an additional evidence session…”. If anything, these add an extra layer of opacity to the matter by exposing a divergence of opinions about the role played by Sport England.

It appears unlikely that the Rugby Club wishes to re-open discussions with WBC about putting a 3G pitch at Monks Lane so that whole project appears to be dead.

As regards Faraday Road, the current administration’s promise to return football there is gradually being realised. A feasibility study has concluded that a 3G pitch is viable and the new playing-pitch strategy – for which we have been waiting for months – is expected to confirm the not very surprising news that better football provision at Faraday Road is a priority.

I understand that WBC aims to confirm funding for this (perhaps £1m) at its Executive meeting on 25 September and will follow this with a planning application. The cautious hope is that the pitch will be ready for use by the early summer of 2026 (more on this below).

Where we might be

If that comes to pass, we’ll then have a better pitch but less good facilities than existed in June 2018 when the ground was closed. The 3G pitch (which could have been put in years ago) will be an improvement: the facilities, however, still have some way to go.

While Faraday Road was mothballed, the stands were sold or gifted, the clubhouse was destroyed in an arson attack and the permimeter fencing disappeared overnight as completely and as mysteriously as if it had been abducted by aliens. Not a great curation record by the previous administration.

The other big difference is the money spent. According to the report, about £220,000 on the Hub project (p6) and about £500,000 on restoring Faraday Road between May 2025 and February 2025 (p19). More will have been spent since then. £750,000+ with less than nothing to show for it can’t be marked down as an impressive RoI. The whole sorry episode has also been divisive, distracting and damaging to WBC’s relationships and reputation.

What went wrong?

The origins of this date back to April 2016 when WBC’s then CEO Nick Carter announced that Faraday Road would close to give the Council’s then development partner vacant possessions of the site. This six-minute video produced by the Newbury Community Football Group (NCFG) looks at this and what followed.

The key point of the April 2016 meeting was that WBC didn’t need to do anything to find a replacement. Crucially, Nick Carter said he had “taken advice” on this matter.

Everything that happened afterwards was predicated this statement being correct. “Advice” can take many different forms, ranging from a carefully drafted expert written opinion to a conversation in the Council car park at which someone told Nick Carter that “we probably don’t need to find a replacement.” I’m not sure if this advice has ever been produced.

The advice might have been that, due to the way the regulations were worded, a replacement facility would have to be found before the old facility could be redeveloped (better worded national regulations would say that a closure could not happen until a replacement had been opened).

However, as the rules stood, the Council could perhaps close a facility with legal, if not moral, impunity. It was only when an application to develop the original site were submitted that this decision could be challenged. As this was always WBC’s reason for closing the ground, this was going to become an issue at some point.

Getting the point

This finally became apparent at an internal WBC meeting in July 2021 (pp14-15 of the report): it then was accepted that this advice was wrong, at least if redevelopment were contemplated (as it always had been).

The NCFG and others had been pointing this out for five years. The depressing conclusion from this is that a truth, particularly an unwelcome one, is vastly more likely to be believed if it comes from inside the organisation.

This was the hinge on which the matter turned. From that point, WBC had to find a suitable replacement ground before it could redevelop the old one. It became increasingly clear that no such replacement could be found.

WBC was so keen to redevelop Faraday Road because, so the logic of the vision ran, the site would become a gleaming and remunerative centrepiece to the regeneration of the London Road Industrial Estate (LRIE), a project which had been dazzling the imagination of the Council for some years. By July 2021, however, this was in tatters due to an appeal decision that ruled that the appointment of St Modwen as the developer was flawed. All of this added perhaps £1m onto the wider costs of the scheme.

Doubts were also surfacing about whether, due to new regulations about flooding risks, permission could ever be granted there. To make matters worse for the Council, downstream residents threatened legal appeals regarding any development that might increase the already serious surface-water problems at their properties.

Where we were

The Council therefore found itself with a vision but no development partner; a ground that it had closed but possibly couldn’t get permission to build on even if it had an application (which it didn’t); the need to find a replacement, which was proving impossible to locate; legal threats from residents; and damaged relationships with the local football community.

It pressed on, however. The solution hit upon was a new stadium at the Rugby Club’s ground at Monks Lane. It’s the procurement aspects of this which the belatedly published report considers.

There were many objections raised about the commercial and other aspects of this proposed deal, all of which the report considers. The main one, however, is yet another unfortunate paradox.

From not believing it needed to find a replacement (which it did), WBC now claimed that Monks Lane was a replacement (which it wasn’t). In fact, WBC variously described it as a replacement and not a replacement (terms like enhanced replacement and partial replacement were also used). Between December 2021 and March 2023, the project was defined by WBC (or the High Court) as being on three occasions a replacement and and two others as not.

The discussions stumbled on until the May 2023 elections hove into view. This the Lib Dems won, one of their pledges being to restore football to Faraday Road.

However, this multiple debacle poses an even more serious question.

A different path

When the then CEO made his confident statement about the lack of need for a replacement ground, this would have been music to the ears of the Conservative administration. If someone in authority tells you that advice (by implication, legal advice) has confirmed a situation that you want to believe is true, why would you challenge it?

However, someone needs to. This falls on the opposition (which back then could all have fitted into the back of a taxi) or the Scrutiny Commission (which, for whatever reason, appeared uninterested in doing so). Chaired by a non-administration member and with a more balanced council, the Scrutiny Commission (now Committee) seems to have more energy and teeth.

However, this does suggest that scrutiny is least effective when there’s one party with an overwhelming number of members: which is, as this indicates, the time when it’s most needed. There are ways of dealing with this but would involve appointing non-elected people or former councillors to avoid an overload of members from a particular party. However, this co-option is probably not permitted by law.

The role of scrutiny

However, this does make one think what Scrutiny Commissions (or Committees) are meant to do.

• They aren’t there to cause trouble, to score political points or to kick officers. At the meeting on 16 September, WBC’s Leader Jeff Brooks suggested that “improving the services and residents’ experiences” was the outcome he preferred. However, I would add that they also need to speak truth to power and to suggest practical ways by which these and other goals can be accomplished. The exact matter it’s considering is sometimes bu then over and done with: can lessons be learned?
• They shouldn’t be there just as talking shops, with recommendations sent to Executive but ignored. The Monks Lane report referred to several instances where the recommendations of the 2020 Scrutiny Commission report into the LRIE had not been sufficiently acted upon and so needed tre-stating.
• They should not exist as supine adjuncts of the Executive or the senior officers, to applaud the good and ignore the bad. It’s a full-time job as there’s a lot to look at but it needs to be done with dispassion and conviction. I think that’s happening better now than it used to.

The lessons from the Faraday Road debacle, which caused the Monks Lane one, is that one pertinent question asked and answered at the right time can save an ocean of trouble. It’s easy to be wise now about the advice that Nick Carter said he received in 2016. However, if that had been challenged then, almost all of what I’ve summarised above would exist only in a parellel universe.

Discussions at the meeting

At the discussion at the Scrutiny meeting, the Chair, Carolyne Culver (Green) read a summary of the conclusions and recommendations.

• The then portfolio holder Councillor Howard Woollaston (Con) said he’d only just seen the report (although, as the Chair pointed out and as referred to above, a similar version of it had been sent to him before the 13 March Scrutiny meeting).
  He also added that it ignored the fact that his actions were based on the fact that “the decision by the administration at the time was that Faraday Road was a non-starter for football.” This could be taken as saying that he was working within a constraint that he wasn’t completely happy with. At the time, I wrote that at least he, as the new portfolio holder, was trying to solve the problem, something his predecessors had not.
  He also said that having former Executive members on the TFG would have been a good thing although I understand this isn’t allowed.
• Councillor Chris Read (LD), a member of the Task and Finish Group, spoke about the project-management aspects, on which he’s professionally experienced. He referred to fifteen recommendations from the above-mentioned LRIE 2020 report which were still found wanting. Many lessons,” he concluded, “hadn’t been taken into account.”
• Councillor David Marsh (Green), though not a member of the Scrutiny Committee, was invited briefly to speak as a member of the TFG. He stressed that this was cross-party and referred to the fact that Councillor Paul Dick (Con), also a TFG member, had spoken “eloquently and passionately” in favour of the Hub, which Coulcillor Marsh had at a different meeting opposed. The matter here was, he stressed, not about individual views at the time but about “the entire process.”
• Councillor Ross MacKinnon (Con) took issue with the emphasis given to the NCFG’s cost estimates, the perception of the questions in the consultation and the precise nature of the breakdown of trust of the Council. These were, as ever, trenchently made and not without merit but were, I feel, generally answered by the Chair. The job of any report is to take a view on a range of opinions and not invite witnesses back multiple times. Not everyone is going to agree with all aspects. The lessons are in the recommendations.
• Councillor Jeff Brooks (LD) asked whether either former Leader Lynne Doherty (Con) or former CEO Nick Carter had been asked to attend the TFG’s sessions. The Chair said that it had been felt that inviting the then portfolio holder Howard Woollaston (Con) was felt sufficient for the purposes of the inquiry.
  I can see her point: however, the question was a good one. It would, though, have extended the report back to 2016. I would like to know about the original advice that was received and why WBC clung to this for so long. However, the inquiry was about Monks Lane, not what caused it. Monks Lane was just the second half of the match.

Speaking truth to power

Everything that happened did so because of a political decision that was given impetus by the lure of a development partnership that proved ill-founded and an assumption about muncipal responsibility that proved incorrect. The first was decided in court. The second was not acccpted until July 2021 but its consequences were not fully addressed thereafter. Were the right question about the advice to have been challenged at the time, this colossal waste of time and money would not have happened.

So we return to the idea of speaking truth to power. Asuumptions with these kind of ramifications need to be challenged. As this story shows, they were, but not internally.

This makes the Scrutiny Committee, and the opposition, particularly valuable. Their work to be celebrated and supported, not sidelined, denigrated or damned with faint praise. Assumptions that look important need to be checked quickly. Recommendations that are made need to be acted upon. If they aren’t, the same errors will keep happening again and again and again.

Next up at Faraday Road

As mentioned above, plans are slowly emerging to improve the ground. However, it’s still not clear what the project is that needs to be managed. Is it a 3G pitch only or will there be a clubhouse and other facilities? How will it be funded? Who will run it?

The new administration inherited a fairly oven-ready plan from the NCFG that appeared to deal with all these issues. This wasn’t proceded with (and the permission has now lapsed). There are several possible reasons why not.

Perhaps it wasn’t what some officers wanted or it was flawed in some way (though it was approved). Perhaps there was a point of obscure principle involved, with WBC not proceeding with any application it had not itself made. Perhaps the Council couldn’t face any further dealings with NCFG after several divisive years, or felt that other groups should be given a chance (though I’m not aware any expression of interest was requested more widely). Whatever the reason/s, that ship has sailed.

WBC’s leader Jeff Brooks felt, however, that the Council has “moved with real speed” on this matter. The new 3G pitch should be announced soon and ready by the spring, with WBC funding the capital cost.

The funding is important in several ways. This can take a couple of years to raise from the Football Foundation andor others. When it is, though, there must be cast-iron guarantees through leases and agreements that the site will be retianed for football for, say, twenty-five years. This would kill off any possibility of re-development, what the Lib Dem’s 2023 manifesto said it wanted to accomplish.

The other option, and one WBC had adopted, is to fund it itself. This has the advantage of speed but adds to the debt. Crucially, no such guarantees would be in place. A future administration, or a wholly new council, could in future be lured by another seductive vision and decide to plough it up.

You might say that it would be howling madness to do this. However it was madness to close the ground in 2018 and not to re-open it ofter the St Modwen deal collapsed, and madness then to compound the problem by trying to build a flawed replacement/non-replacement elsewhere.

As it is, WBC is faced with a project-management problem (and for a project that hasn’t been defined) for a sports ground, perhaps with facilities: in other words, for something alarmingly similar to the Monks Lane one which has recently been so heavily criticised.

Other projects

There are also a number of other projects, some even more nebulous, which come under the heading of “transformation”. This slippery concept has been given extra impetus by the government allowing councils to fund this by selling assets. This could be seen as selling the family silver to pay the regular bills: not the only accounting sleight of hand that the government has resorted to in order to keep most authorities solvent.

These projects have, unlike one that involves building something, no familiar stages, like a planning committee, where it can be scrutinised and no clear moment, like an opening, when it’s obviously finished.

There seem to be several aims of transformation. One is to save money, though this could be over a long period in which case the savings will be hard to demonstrate. There also has to be a benefit, to users of the service or residents as a whole. A third is that, as a result, the council should be better tooled-up to meet future challenges. An IT re-vamp, recruitment reforms or changes to the home-to-school service, to pick but three, will all demand different views of these priorities.

These are all laudable goals. However, measuring and managing these shifting factors requires project-management skills of a high order. It doesn’t seem that WBC, or many other councils, possess the staff in sufficient number for all the tasks that require their attention. As the TFG report showed, even managing bricks-and-mortar projects was problematic if, as there are, there are other calls on its resources.

WBC’s, Jeff Brooks was, however, keen to stress the positive achievements. “We’re improving project management via a central project management office,” he told me on 18 September. “We’ve also been working hard on reducing freelancer costs and improving recruitment which is saving £6m a year.”

There’s no doubt that WBC has made improvements in the last couple of years but, as the recommendations in the report show, more is needed. Will these reforms prove to be enough?

This isn’t a criticism of anyone at WBC, present or past, but an observation about the work that councils increasingly need to do, which is often in excess of the specialist staff they’re able to afford. Councils – which provide hundreds of services – are expected to produce results on a par with that which the private sector can provide (but sometimes doesn’t) though generally with a fraction of the resources or buying power.

How WBC will be able to fix the problems with its project management – which not one but two Scrutiny reports have identified – and apply these to more complex projects, many of which are already under way, is an interesting question. Progress has been made but more needs to be done. It needs friends in this process and some will be critical ones. I wish the Council well.

Brian Quinn

• I’m vividly aware that other opinions exist on the matter. If you would like to contribute any thoughts which will (once approved) be visible to readers of this post, please use the “Leave a comment” box below. If you would like to get in touch privately, email brian@pennypost.org.uk.