YET ANOTHER SKELETON IN LABOUR’S CLOSET

Some time ago, S247 decided to fight for the Section 106 money sitting unspent at Bolsover District Council. I’m proud to announce that we have dragged this issue out of the shadows. I am no longer the only one fighting for this money.

Before we get into the details of the next issue I want to fix, let me savor the feeling of victory for a moment. After a series of articles on S247, several letters, phone calls and countless hours of work, the “S106 scandal” has finally gone public, and it has become clearly uncomfortable for the Labour Party. The cat is out of the bag. There is no way to hide a decade of Labour Party inaction now.

STC will discuss that issue on next Full Council meeting on 14th of Octobe4 2026.

A WIN IS A WIN, BUT…
Unfortunately, success never satisfies me for long. As soon as I reach one goal, after a while I start feeling unfulfilled and hungry again, and I begin looking for something new to sink my teeth into. It’s called the “arrival fallacy”, and I’ve got it. I’ve got it baaad. I even researched it…

The psychologist Tal Ben-Shahar coined the term “arrival fallacy” for the belief that reaching a goal will bring lasting happiness, followed by the discovery that the satisfaction fades almost immediately. I get it whenever I’m working on something. The satisfaction from even the biggest win fades fast, and I move on to the next thing that keeps me awake at night.

The sad fact is that the S106 issue isn’t over, but I will keep an eye on it. Residents, councillors and every officer involved must now do everything in their power to make sure this money stays in Shirebrook. As someone outside the council, I believe I have done everything I could. I spent countless hours bringing this issue to public attention, but at this point I have used up every tool of influence I have. Maybe as a councillor I could do more, but at the last election 80% of residents chose to stay at home, so Labour won 100% of the seats on STC and BDC, and it’s on them to deal with this.

TIME TO MOVE ON? YES, BUT…
So it’s time for something new. I thought about it, asked around, sketched out what was bothering me and… found another issue the Labour Party would rather keep from residents, because it could mean huge financial losses for taxpayers paying STC’s Labour extortion money (sorry, I mean ever-growing council tax).

BEFORE WE MOVE ON – BIG THANKS TO…
Before I start, I must thank Cllr Sarah Reaney (Reform). She was one of the first people I contacted about this issue, and, as an FOI response later confirmed, she had been working on it before I started making big noise about it. I just added fuel to the fire. For example, I forced Her Highness the Leader of BDC, caviar socialist Jane Yates, to respond. On Facebook, with bl;ocked comments mind you – but still. It was first time ever, when local Labour politician spoke publicly about this issue. In all fairness I need to add that many of new STC councillors also spoke up on the issue since I raised it.

I’ll be honest: I had no idea how much Sarah Reaney had done on this until I received the response to my FOI request to BDC, which included a nine-page file of her correspondence on the matter.

So I want to send my sincere and heartfelt thanks to Sarah Reaney for her work behind the scenes, away from the public eye.

At the opposite end of the spectrum sits Jane Yates (Labour). I found no trace of her activity in that matter other than one manipulative post on FB, and when I asked her for an interview, she flatly refused. What kind of politician turns down free publicity? Answer: one who has a lot to hide and is afraid voters will see their true face and views. Jane Yates? Shame on you. Shame!

WHAT ELSE WE, RESIDENTS, SHOULD KNOW?
When the bliss of success and the feeling of a job well done had passed, I sat down, grabbed myself a cuppa and went back over the most outrageous examples of Labour incompetence I’d seen while I was a councillor. Then I went over the things they avoided like the plague. What else could I help bring to light and try to fix? The list is long, but three things stand out like a sore thumb: STC’s employment levels and practices, STC’s net-zero contracts and… the alleged lease of Shirebrook Town Hall to BDC. Yes, I used word ‘alleged’ and there is a reason for it.

I wrote extensively about two first issues and I only touched on ‘lease’ issue. I also know that first two issues are looked at by new councillors. But third issue? I haven’t heard a peep about this ‘lease’ and when I did small research into the subject- word ‘alleged’ pop out. That immediately raised my red flags.

LEASE? WHAT LEASE?
For years, Labour Party propaganda and BDC have claimed that BDC signed a lease agreement with STC for the Town Hall, yet even as a councillor I never got to see this document. So I decided to find out exactly what the agreement says and show it to you. Aaaand its not that easy. Truth is that anything involving taxpayers’ money spent on anything other than the competitive bidding, military and intelligence services should be public. So neither BDC nor STC should have any problem disclosing this agreement, right? But we talking about Labour party-led councils here, so… expect shenanigans.

A LEASE SO SECRET THAT EVEN THE LAND REGISTRY DOESN’T KNOW ABOUT IT
By law, every lease longer than 7 years must be registered with HM Land Registry. No ifs, no buts. So, for the first time in S247’s history, I paid for the documents that should confirm this lease exists.

Here’s what they show. The Town Hall stands on title DY399965 (see the title plan below: the plot edged in red is 209 Station Road).

Shirebrook Town Council is the sole registered owner, and has been since BDC transferred the land to it in July 2012. When I viewed the register on 29 August 2026, no lease was noted against the title, and there is no charges register at all. A search of the address found no separate leasehold title either. Nothing. NOTHING!




This contradicts what former councillor Tony Burns found out and shared with me (below). He had also been digging into this and received the following response from BDC’s Monitoring Officer:

So BDC says it holds a 199-year lease. The Land Registry has no record of one. So… what the hell is going on?!

SOMETHING STINKS HERE! IT’S YET ANOTHER LABOUR PARTY “DEAL”!
The bottom line is this: I ordered a pile of documents from HM Land Registry. I read them and feed them into AI to help me analise what I missed out. Me, my intuition, my usual adviser and the most sophisticated AI in the world all say the same thing: the maths isn’t mathing here.

I paid for the documents out of my own pocket. And like links in a chain, one strange thing led to another, payment to payment, statement to statement, until I hit a wall. Transparency? Whether by design or by incompetence, the result is blurry, shady, muddy and complicated. It doesn’t compute.

WHERE THERE’S A WILL, THERE’S A WAY
I’ve hope that some of the new (non-Labour) councillors are looking into this, but I can’t see anything official and its too late to send question for next session of STC. There is also no trace of this issue in the minutes I’ve read or at the meetings I’ve attended. Sadly, it’s yet another hidden pile of crap left by previous administrations and it could be on back burner since new councillors have so much more important issues at the plate. I bet, sooner or later they will get to it and my hope is that they will be as transparent and open about it as possible. For now it stinks in darkness, and it will take time and effort to bring it to forefront and clean it out.

At this point, there’s one thing I know for sure: this deal is vastly unfavourable to the residents of Shirebrook. We gave away part of a property worth hundreds of thousands of pounds for £1 a year. For 199 years. Only Labour could do that… with your votes or your indifference. 80% of us didn’t vote… shame…

WHAT DID YOU EXPECT? LABOUR WORKING FOR SHIREBROOK? ARE YOU MAD?
I went into this expecting one document. A lease. One piece of paper, signed by two councils, about a building in the middle of our town. Instead, I have spent several evenings and a pile of money assembling a picture from fragments.

Two separate title registers. A restriction that tells me a condition exists but not what it says. A transfer deed I can only get by posting a cheque to Gloucester and waiting a fortnight. I also found some old covenants on the title for the Market Place, dating from 1921, 1948 and 1983. And I still don’t have the lease for the Town Hall. So I refocused: give me the lease or give me death (metaphorically, of course).IS IT REALLY YOURS IF YOU CAN’T DECIDE ABOUT IT?

Both the Town Hall site and the Market Place belong to Shirebrook Town Council, freehold and outright. Bolsover District Council transferred them to the Town Council by a deed dated 27 June 2012. And BDC attached a condition: no sale, lease or other disposal of either piece of land can be registered unless BDC first signs a certificate confirming that “paragraph 4.1” of that deed has been complied with. That condition is on the public register today.

The register tells you the condition exists. It does not tell you what paragraph 4.1 actually requires. For that you need the transfer deed itself, a document both councils signed and both councils should hold. I have never seen it published or shown to the residents of Shirebrook.

And here’s the twist: a 199-year lease to BDC is exactly the kind of disposal that condition covers. So if the lease exists, BDC would have had to sign off on its own lease, and then someone still didn’t register it. Sounds about right…noooot!

I can order a copy of the deed from Gloucester. It will cost me, and we’ll wait for snail mail to come back. Or Labour, STC and BDC could simply come clean and tell us, transparently, what’s what. Right? Hence a new FOI request. I want to see the lease, and I want to know why it isn’t registered.

TO LEASE OR NOT TO LEASE – THAT IS THE QUESTION
HM Land Registry records no lease against the freehold title to the Town Hall site. A lease granted for more than seven years would normally appear on the register. By now we should all accept that the word “normally” doesn’t apply to decades of Labour administrations. It’s high time that changed.

I’ve sent an FOI (see below article) request to BDC. Their answer will be published here.

Sylwester Zwierzynski info@shirebrook247.com
Lead picture: Created with Midjourney

Subject: Freedom of Information Request: Shirebrook Town Hall lease and 2012 Transfer

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am writing to request information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and, where applicable, the Environmental Information Regulations 2004.

This request concerns Bolsover District Council’s occupation of part of Shirebrook Town Hall, 209 Station Road, Shirebrook. The Council’s Director of Governance and Monitoring Officer has stated in correspondence that BDC holds a 199-year lease of the ground floor at a rent of £1 per year. The register for the freehold title (DY399965), which I viewed on 29 August 2026, shows no lease noted against it.

I request:

1. A copy of the lease, or any other agreement, under which BDC occupies part of Shirebrook Town Hall.
2. A copy of the Transfer dated 27 June 2012 between Bolsover District Council and Shirebrook Town Council, including its Schedule (in particular paragraph 4.1).
3. A copy of any certificate issued by BDC under the restriction entered on titles DY399965 and DY111610 on 10 July 2012.
4. Confirmation of whether an application was made to HM Land Registry to register the lease referred to in item 1, and if so, the date of that application.

If you consider that any exemption applies, please identify it, set out the public interest reasoning, and disclose the remainder with only the exempt parts redacted. If you hold no information for any item, please confirm that in writing.

I look forward to your response within 20 working days.

Yours faithfully,

Sylwester Zwierzyński
Shirebrook247