Readers of Ferret will no doubt remember the “free” multipurpose building gifted to Independent Hemsworth Town Council, that could accommodate the donkeys or diggers or trailers or anything else that may be better kept out of sight of the general public.
Mr Jim Kenyon – Chair, Independent Hemsworth Town Council continually states that this building was “free”.
Ferret can confirm this far from the truth.
A trusted source to Ferret, has “leaked” an email from Mr Alan Draper, Clerk at Independent Hemsworth Town Council that tells some of the actual truth behind this building and the continuing costs to you.
Hello Finance Committee,
Re:- Storage unit – Hemsworth Water Park
The procurement of the above has already been approved by the council with Jason Begg as the appointed competent person to oversee the project whereby our grounds maintenance team will deconstruct the unit at its current location and reconstruct it in the compound at the park.
The previous owner assured the council that asbestos was not present.
Jason is in the process of obtaining quotes for the asbestos removal and the cheapest price thus far is £3,400.
Apparently, whilst our grounds maintenance team were dismantling the building at the seller’s location they found asbestos in its roof space. They quite rightly stopped work and reported its presence. This apparently came as a surprise to our representatives at Independent Hemsworth Town Council as they had been assured by the seller that it was asbestos free.
Ferret believes this raises the following points:
- A visual survey and taking the word of the seller, shows a lack of due diligence. Simply stating the building did not look old enough to contain asbestos without seeing documentary proof of age demonstrates negligence.
- Why wasn’t this building subjected to a proper survey and risked assessed for asbestos prior to work commencing?
- The procurement of this building was agreed at a given price and condition, this has now been found to be false. The procurement should have been referred back to the Councillors in a properly agenda item where the significant changes could be discussed and the appropriate action decided to be taken
Further extract from email:
“From speaking with the council chairman and committee chairman earlier, a reasonable course of action would be to ask the previous owner to pay half of the cost of the asbestos removal.”
Now this may seem a reasonable course of action to Mr Jim Kenyon, the man who has wasted thousands of pounds of our money already, but this does not seem a reasonable course of action at all to Ferret.
Hemsworth Town Council has been sold a building that has been misrepresented. A reasonable course of action to Ferret would be that the seller pays all costs incurred for the removal of the asbestos or the deal is cancelled.
It also appears that Hemsworth Town Council have taken no part in the tender process and unsealed quotes have been received by a third party and opened with no one from the Council being involved.
The lowest quote being £3400 which is a substantial amount of our money.
Further extract from the email:
“So, this can be discussed at the Finance sub-Committee meeting on Thursday (strictly speaking, it’s not an agenda item but we need to move expeditiously on this for the obvious health and safety aspect).”
As work had ceased on the dismantling, why did they need to move “expeditiously”?
This sound like another “cover up” using Health and Safety to try to hide their shortcomings again or did the asbestos ever even exist?
A finance subcommittee is not empowered to make decisions on purchases, no committee not even the full Council, should make decisions of any kind on items that have not been included on the agenda and the reports considered and stating actions to be required etc.
Ferret believes there was no reason that proper procedures could not have been followed.
So, given this Council’s past record, Ferret has to ask these additional questions:
- What evidence is there that the material found if there was any, was actually asbestos?
- What evidence is there of where this tendering was advertised?
- Did the Councillors at Hemsworth Town Council even see the “quotes”?
- Why didn’t the council stop this procurement until it had reviewed all the changes to the agreed contract
- What firm was actually employed and empowered to actually oversee this project?
- What firm actually removed this asbestos?
- Where was this disposed?
Ferret has just one additional thought: Was this at the time that “waste” was buried at the Waterpark?
Also the question is who was this lady called tranter from was it Huddersfield or Halifax I can’t remember properly
who appeared from no where offered this container /farm building to HTC being psychic to know they would need one for their boys toys
Donated this building that has no doors by the way so they need to purchase some but then asked for £2000 plus the cost of dismantling, removing asbestos, building back up by the way being reported to the health and safety executive for seriously breaching health and safety in the process off erecting the building using £8,000 on concrete flooring
Now needs electricity running to it at another cost
And having the added extra of the rumours that under that flooring is buried quiet a lot of the asbestos mmm no wonder they didn’t want to investigate the dumping and burying of the rubbish at the waterpark which by the way as it breaks down under that soil will be a health hazard to your kids and the environment
Ferret you should write a book on all this stuff you have unearthed you will make a fortune
Hang on… how could they ask the ‘seller’ to pay half towards removal of asbestos, surely there is no ‘seller’ if the building was free?
The list of scams just keeps getting longer and longer, it probably extends to every area they touch and of course it is us that pays the price what’s goes into their pockets comes out of ours.
Available to view on HTC FB or HTC website, where it was discussed at the council meeting on 5th August 2020 1.00 in
Councillor – This is a brilliant idea and it’s for FREE and I’ve never seen anything like it before.
Great work Cathy, sounds to me like the Councillors concerned should be held personally responsible for all this hidden expenditure and made to repay the community
This lot surpass Boris and his mates honestly the stench coming out of that place is horrendous. ETHELBERT, ETHELBERT, HURRY UP GET ME MORE MEDS
If ever such a thing was needed and it never was then I’m sure it would have been cheaper to approach a reputable local company and obtain an all inclusive quote. They seem to have a gift of purchasing second hand shite that all of a sudden becomes available. They must think we all came with the bread this morning no wonder some of them have taken their hook you don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to work out what’s going off here it stinks stinks stinks pass me the sick bucket
The lying and deceit are catching up with them now, I look forward to the creative accounting being exposed
Should be a asbestos surveyors report available which would have been produced by any asbestos company that undertook the work . I know this from dealing with it most of my life . Before they would have removed would have been a test done on the substance to see which grade of asbestos and the quantity before removal to know which type of asbestos it was to what way they would remove it as there is more than one asbestos .
Think HTC councillors need to realise they’ve got residents that have qualifications and knowledge in many areas. So just because they say “ this is a brilliant “ we should appreciate how they decide to spend our hard earned money
The meeting is available to watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Roke-uDfJO0
residents may have qualifications but Kenyon hasn’t lol
They always know a man that can
My mate conman can do it for us cheaper or free just give him a back hander
The lies they spread about the last council was a insight of what they were actually going to do to us
We all know this rubbish they are buying is crap from someone’s certain company
sell it to Kenyon at a cost they aren’t worth buy them back cheap when they go bust
They don’t even hide half the stuff they do they are so brazen
Money in their pockets
Fools and our money
This is incompetence at best, criminality at worst! To ascertain whether the building contained asbestos, samples would have to be taken and tested in a lab. Visual inspection is not proper procedure. There is also the issue of Town council operatives possibly being put in danger by the negligence of the Town council. This could well be a case for the Health and safety Executive to be informed/investigate. This is serious, and needs investigating properly! It looks like a bunch of clowns are in control of Hemsworth Town Council at present…..If not clowns crooks as well! The fact that a cache of materials reportedly said to contain asbestos were found buried in an area of the Water park is also a concern…whether it is connected or not! Asbestos related diseases can take years to manifest themselves, another question I’d want to ask is, was any suspected asbestos material disturbed by the staff before they stopped working on the building? If so, they could easily be contaminated themselves. Very very worrying situation.