24 ACRES OF LAND IN SHIREBROOK FOR £1

24 acres — that’s about 13 FIFA-sized football pitches. A huge piece of land, right? What would you think if I told you that this land was “transferred” by Bolsover District Council to a private company for just one pound?

Before we dive head-first into yet another rabbit hole, take a look at this document:


It mentions some mysterious project — no name, no date, no details. Just… “project.” A project so vague I can’t find a single solid piece of information about it. All I’ve found is a mortgage charge for 24 acres of land in Shirebrook. Look here:

SNIFFING, DIGGING, ASKING
I’m still digging, but at this point I’ve no clue what’s going on — and I need to start asking questions and getting answers from certain people. For example: why is BDC handing over land for £1 to private companies? What was this project? How did it end? And mostly: can I get a deal like that? Twenty-four acres for one pound? AI estimated the value of that land today at around £5,000,000. What was the value of the loan taken out on it — and how much, if anything, was ever paid back?

LABOUR PARTY: ALLEGED SHADY DEALS, LACK OF TRANSPARENCY. OR, AS THEY CALL IT: BUSINESS AS USUAL?
Do you need to be a Labour Party member — like some directors of this company — to be a “successful politician”? Ouch. Spoiler alert — public records indicate that directors of this private company are, or were, Labour politicians. In recent weeks several have resigned or stepped away from roles.

MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS
I’ve reviewed countless pages of documents in this case so far, and they raise more questions than they answer:

• Did this company take out loans secured against that land?
• Were those loans ever repaid?
• Why do they have dozens of deals in Creswell and only one in Shirebrook?
• Why did the company receive that land in the first place?
• Was there any bidding procedure?
• Was there a vote at BDC to award this deal?
• What project was actually supposed to happen here?
• Was it ever completed?
• And what happened to the land after the project’s completion — or abandonment?

I’ve lived in Shirebrook long enough to know a bit of its history. Yet I can’t find a single person who remembers this project. If you have documents about it, please send them to my email inbox: info@shirebrook247.com
I need every scrap of information. Please.

SECRET PROJECT
Maybe it ended well and all is fine? Or maybe — like many things in Shirebrook — it ended in controversy, quietly swept under Labour’s rug? At this point that rug is so overloaded with issues that some are starting to slip out. It looks more like a mountain. Let’s be honest: Labour’s handling of STC has left a trail of problems, and the cost of by-elections in this single term alone could reach £40,000. WE HAVE BY-ELECTIONS FOR 8 SEATS! That scale is unusual anywhere in the country. And all of it started years ago — with the ongoing pellet scandal and continuing through to the Village Hall saga.

OK, TIME FOR MORE DETAILS
The private company fortunate enough to obtain this land for a single pound — it still exists! And it appears to still be weighed down with debt. The more you look, the less things add up. And then there are the names: strangely familiar ones among the directors of this “lucky” company.
Let me introduce you to:

BOLSOVER URBAN DEVELOPMENT TRUST COMPANY LIMITED
Here’s the link to their Companies House page:

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/02110807

I’ve reviewed some of their documents. I spoke with someone who pointed me towards them. I even asked AI for help — for only the second time in my life, I used Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.1 model for deep research. It found big, fat nothing. All evidence is carefully buried in a memory hole. My source, the AI, and I all came to the same conclusion: something here doesn’t smell right. I just don’t yet know what.

But I have a hypothesis. I won’t share it now. We need to dig deeper. Let’s follow the money

HINTS, TRACES, LEADS, WHISPERS
There are hints of strange coincidences, unanswered questions, unpaid debts, and names linked to past scandals and alleged wrongdoing. Labour Party names — as usual in parts of the Red Wall — keep cropping up. When I uncovered the pellet scandal at the STC Leisure Centre, it triggered a chain of events straight out of a crime novel. My parents told me bluntly: sell the house and get the F out of there, before they do you harm. I told them: it’s not how I roll. I’m staying. And I’ll change this place for better or I die trying.

But this case? This is much bigger. And because no one else seems to be talking about it, I will. The scale of this scandal is hard to grasp — until you start following the money.

FOLLOW THE MONEY
By the time the pellet scandal blew up, taxpayers were losing an estimated £7,000–£10,000 a year. We may still be losing that now. I haven’t seen the cash-books for years — and that’s what first made me think something wasn’t right. According to an unofficial statement from one councillor, none of them had seen the cash-book since April 2025. Ouch.

I proposed a control system for pellet deliveries — noted in the minutes, with a comparison to previous years. Labour rejected the proposal. Subsequently a vote was held to block further discussion about pellets. That hardly felt like transparency.

DO NOT COMPARE ONE SCANDAL TO ANOTHER!
Either way, the pellet contract was signed for 20 years. So, in the worst-case scenario, taxpayers will lose around £200,000 compared to a situation where no “net-zero” deal had been signed. £200,000 sounds like a lot, but around here that’s “toilet money” — literally the same sum we paid for the public toilet that was just demolished on Market Square.

So let’s assume the pellet fiasco might cost £200k. In this land affair, the sums are on a completely different scale. From day one, the figure at stake was £1,200,000. Let me write it again so it hits harder: over one million pounds. Add inflation — that’s closer to £3 million in today’s money. And if you factor in the higher rise in land prices — more like £5 million. Yup! Five big ones. And the debt is still on the company’s books. Who pays the interest? Good question, right?

BEYOND THE MONEY
And beyond the money, there are other things I just don’t understand. For example:

• Isn’t it strange that this company keeps failing to meet its filing obligations with Companies House — and nothing happens? Its page is covered in red exclamation marks. Not for decoration, but to highlight failures.
• Isn’t it strange that I can’t find any records of this so-called project? It must have been huge. Millions were involved. Yet no one seems to know anything. Well — not no one. The directors of this company must know. Right?
• Isn’t it strange that Companies House is packed with files about this firm — but the more you read, the more questions appear? Honestly, I could show you 30 pages, and each one would raise two or three new questions. Some even include documents that look deliberately unreadable — yet they’re still on the Companies House page. At this point I have to use the colloquial: WTF?

JUSTIFY!
I must justify myself. Let us look at some documents again—a special reward for anyone who can actually decipher the document below. Fun fact? This is just one of countless documents about mortgage charges in our district tied to this company. And it comes straight from Companies House — no jokes here, no AI, no Photoshop, no digital trickery. IT’S REAL. Can anyone explain how this is even possible? How has this company been able to get away with it for so long?

SHIREBROOK ON THE CHOPPING BLOCK
And here’s the kicker: among the company’s directors, I found not one, but two councillors who, right now, sit on Bolsover District Council’s Finance Scrutiny Committee. FINANCE. SCRUTINY. COMMITTEE. Let that sink in. Check the full list of directors yourself:
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/02110807 — then click on the “PEOPLE” tab and scroll down. There are more than Duncan and the unemployed rising star of the Shirebrook Labour Party.

INTO THE RABBIT HOLE
Should I dig deeper into this? Technically, it’s a BDC matter and this blog is about Shirebrook — but those 24 acres are right here in Shirebrook. And if this documentation ties directly to the case where Duncan McGregor was reported for misusing regeneration funds, then it’s old news. Carefully hidden from voters, but still — old. Like the Old Guard of the Labour Party.

Yet I still have a question: how is it possible that someone linked to past findings of financial misconduct is still representing the Labour Party? How blind do you have to be to stay a Labour member and allow this to happen?

Do you people have no dignity?

NEW/OLD SCANDAL
I have a hypothesis about this scandal. I won’t share it now. I need to look into the eyes of a few people first. I need to ask them questions. I want to know more. Do you?

Sylwester Zwierzynski info@shirebrook247.com
Lead picture: Ideaogram AI
Inline pictures: Companies House, Bolsover District Council