Town Hall lease… “has not yet been completed” (?!)

My jaw dropped when I got a reply to my FOI request about the lease of Shirebrook Town Hall. In April 2017 Shirebrook Town Council signed a deed promising to grant Bolsover District Council a 199-year lease on part of the new Town Hall.

Nine and a half years later, BDC says the lease has never been completed, and that it is still waiting for STC to complete it. BDC has moved in. The paperwork, apparently, hasn’t. Seriously – is there anything Labour has done properly in the last two decades? This is yet another scandal that YOU should punish Labour for at the next election. Full stop.

DOCUMENTS WILL TELL YOU… COMEDY!
I have attached the full FOI reply plus the “draft lease” document at the end of the article, so you can read them yourself and draw your own conclusions. But for those who enjoy seeing the world the way I see it, I’ve pulled out the most interesting bits. As usual, documents like these contain 50 pages of drivel designed to make you sleepy, so they can sneak through one or two lines that change everything.

I enjoy looking for those “tricks”. It’s like hunting for a golden nugget in a river of bureaucratic sewage. And the first of these golden nuggets of bureaucracy is coming right up! Here it is!

This is the front page of a 199-year lease between two public bodies. There’s no date, only a year. Then someone, God knows who, took a pen and scribbled the word “DRAFT” across the printed page. No initials. No date next to it. Nothing to tell you who wrote it or when. What? Did they run out of printer ink to print a proper draft?

BUT THAT IS JUST A START OF THIS WILD RIDE! BUCKLE UP, CUPCAKE!
To be fair, the 2017 Agreement does say the lease would be “in accordance with the draft attached”, so a draft it was always meant to be. But this is how two councils, both funded by you, chose to mark a document handing over part of a public building for the next two centuries: a biro and no initials.

I’m just a lorry driver. Each time I change ANYTHING in my work paperwork, I have to put my initials beside it. If I handed in a route sheet like this, it would come straight back to me to fix. If this looks sloppy to me, how would a well-paid lawyer see it? Let me tell you: lawyers see pound signs when they look at documents like this. Unclear paperwork is how disputes start, and disputes are how lawyers get paid. And guess who pays the lawyers on both sides of a dispute between STC and BDC? You do.

REDACTED AND EXEMPT
You’ll also notice some black boxes in the documents. Those were added by BDC’s FOI team, who removed the names of individuals under Section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act (personal information). That’s their legal right. But here’s my view: these are two taxpayer-funded councils signing a deal over a taxpayer-funded building. The people who sign deeds on behalf of public bodies are acting in a public role, not a private one. Right now I can’t tell you who signed it, who drafted it, or who picked up that pen. And that, in a town hall built with your money, is a problem.

Explanation? They kept it exempt (secret, closed for public). We can see trace of it in minutes of BDC where ‘Executive’ sought approval for additional capital investment in a NEW CONTACT CENTRE in Shirebrook. That meeting was conducted on 17 July 2017 and as usual in Labourland- exempt for public although you can read minutes from it here (a lot of familiar names there too):
https://committees.bolsover.gov.uk/Data/Executive/20170911/Agenda/report19857.pdf

GOLDEN NUGGETS EXTRAVAGANZA: A MASTERCLASS IN HOW NOT TO CTRL+C, CTRL+V
I said I like spotting small things. These documents are full of them. Some of them are hilarious and so obviously stupid that I read that and I think: how is this even possible? Some are in the Agreement for Lease, which was actually signed and sealed as a deed in 2017. Others are in the draft lease that was supposed to follow it. None of them needs a law degree to understand. All you need is a pair of eyes, which apparently nobody involved had to hand.

In the signed Agreement:

• Clause 4.2 says STC will “appoint the Construction Contract”. You appoint a contractor, not a contract. Someone missed out three letters in a signed legal deed.
• Clause 5.3 tells you what happens if the deal is terminated “in accordance with clause 10.2”. Clause 10.2 is about vacant possession and has nothing to do with termination. The termination clause is 5.2.
• Clause 8.3.3 sends disputes to arbitration “in accordance with clause 14”. Arbitration is clause 13. Clause 14 is about something else entirely.
• Clause 11.3 says BDC is deemed to know everything “referred to in Clause 9.1”. Clause 9.1 is about building defects. The list it should be pointing to is in 11.1.
• Clause 6.7 says variations are allowed “under clause 6.9”. The variations clause is 6.8.
• There are two clauses numbered 9.2.1. And one is numbered “111.1”.

That’s a handful of broken references in one short signed deed. Nobody read this through before signing it. But even better goldmine is in the draft lease. The ‘dentist’ part? Beyond my rhetorical skills.

• Clause 5.18 says fire safety details must go to the Fire Prevention Officer of the Nottinghamshire Fire Brigade. Shirebrook is in Derbyshire. Nobody even changed the county.
• Clause 7.6.4 makes an exception for substances “used in connection with dental surgery”. This is a lease for council offices. Is someone pulling teeth in the planning department?
• Clause 7.6.7 talks about the Tenant’s “director” and “major shareholder”. The Tenant is Bolsover District Council. Who exactly are BDC’s shareholders?
• The lease defines what happens if the Tenant goes bankrupt or into liquidation, as if a council were a corner shop.
• The rent is £1 a year. Clause 7.2.2.2 still insures against loss of rent for two years. That’s an insurance policy protecting £2.
• It mentions the “Perpetuity Period”, “Decorating Years”, “Adjoining Property” and a “Guarantor”. None of these is defined anywhere in the lease, and there is no guarantor.
• Clause 5.21 is headed “Encroachments”, but its sub-clauses are numbered 5.22.1 and 5.22.2, and then comes a different clause 5.22. There are two clauses numbered 6.2.2. Clauses 5.5.2.2, 5.5.2.3 and 5.5.3, plus several rows under clause 8, are empty boxes with nothing written in them.
• The permitted use is “Class B1”. That use class was abolished in 2020. If STC ever gets round to signing this, they’ll be signing a lease that refers to planning rules which no longer exist.

This is what a template looks like when someone downloads a lease written for a dentist’s surgery in Nottinghamshire, changes the names on the front, and calls it a day. Professionals were paid public money to produce this. Councillors and officers, also paid with public money, were supposed to check it. One side signed a deed full of mistakes. Then nine and a half years went by without a lease being completed at all. Labour circus!

THE LEASE WAS NEVER SIGNED. NOW WE KNOW IT FOR SURE.
I will skip over the fact that, in the past, Labour and BDC representatives strongly hinted that the everything was done and dusted. To be fair, some Labour politicians kept complete silence about it and pushed the job of making statements onto someone else.

So what do we actually have? A tenant without a lease. In 2017 STC signed a deed promising to grant BDC a 199-year lease for £1 a year. BDC moved in. Nine and a half years later, the lease itself still hasn’t been completed, and nobody seems to be in any hurry. SOCIALISM IN FULL SWING!

Try that yourself. Tell your landlord you’ve moved in on a deal of £1 a year for 199 years, and you’ll sort out the paperwork sometime in the next decade. See how long that lasts.

CURRENT LABOUR LEADERSHIP?
When I asked about the lease at the last STC Full Council meeting. Cllr Dale Smith (Labour), Chair of STC, immediately turned to Cllr Andrew Stevens (Reform) and passed the question to him.

Why? My reading: with all due respect, Dale Smith is starting to show the qualities of a typical Labour politician – plenty of photo opportunities, and plenty of distance between himself and anyone who might ask the “wrong” questions. So he dumped the answer on Cllr Andrew Stevens, who was nowhere near the STC chamber when that “deal” was negotiated.

Cllr Andrew Stevens stated the truth and fell silent. Which tells me there is more to it… I assume new councillors are aware of the issue, they are working on it, but they were probably warned by lawyers to not speak about it. Ehhh, Labour. You broke this town in so many places…

WHAT ABOUT THE BDC LEADER?
The current Leader of BDC, Shirebrook’s own Cllr Jane Yates (Labour), has been very quiet about this issue. She was elected Leader of Bolsover District Council at a full council meeting on 29 January 2025 and I never saw her posting about it. Her husband, Cllr Michael Yates (Labour), who sits on STC, has been weirdly quiet about it too. The silence from Labour about this lease is deafening. Not a peep from them. Not a squeak.

It’s like… they don’t want to talk about another example of Shirebrook residents being treated like a cash cow by Labour’s so-called elites. With Labour leaders in charge, Shirebrook always gets the short end of the stick. Am I right or am I right?

TIMELINE IS A FUN LINE
So who, how and when? Why has nobody talked about this for almost ten years, leaving it to me to bring it to light? Why can’t I find a single trace of it in my historical records? And believe me – I looked. I even dug out an old hard drive, hooked it up and went through the documents from 2014–2017 once more. It was a trip back in time, reminding me of all the evenings I spent unraveling the secrets of Labour sleaze in Shirebrook. Ah, youth…

You may not know this, but when I started preparing to launch S247, I downloaded all the minutes of previous STC meetings. I got a bunch of missing ones through FOI too. It was a whole ordeal to squeeze them out, but I did it. STC refused to disclose anything from before the “pellet deal renegotiation”, but still – I should have something on record about this. The deal was signed in 2017, and I have the whole set of minutes from that time. Yet not a single word mentions a “Town Hall lease”.

Back then I found so much sleaze, waste and neglect that after a while I decided to turn it into a “jaw-dropping” series: three articles about the most insane things I found in STC minutes. You can read them here:
Part 1: https://shirebrook247.com/2020/05/23/town-council-meeting-minutes-top-jaw-dropping-moments-part-1/
Part 2: https://shirebrook247.com/2020/06/23/town-council-meeting-minutes-top-jaw-dropping-moments-part-2/
Part 3: https://shirebrook247.com/2020/07/12/town-council-meeting-minutes-part-3-labour-party-or-lazy-party/

My history of fighting for transparency is missing one big thing: not a single mention of the Town Hall lease. Either it was never discussed in public at STC, or it was buried somewhere I couldn’t find it. But why? Why was Labour so quiet about the Town Hall’s so-called deal? I would love to speculate… But for now, let’s stick to the facts. And the next fact I focused on is… dates. Timestamps.

DATES ARE THE FOUNDATION OF HISTORY, AND IF YOU DON’T LEARN HISTORY, YOU WILL REPEAT IT OVER AND OVER AGAIN
First things first. As I showed you above, the date on the draft lease was never filled in. All the front page tells us is “2017”. But your trusted blogger read the whole thing. And? I found something.

That “2017” is printed on the draft lease. The people who drafted it expected the lease to be signed in 2017. It’s now nearly 2027, and BDC says it still isn’t done. Nine years late, and counting. And the deal didn’t start in 2017 either. BDC’s own minutes from July 2017 refer back to an “original approval report in 2015”. Local government moves slowly, so this was being cooked up in 2015–2016. So who was Chairman of STC back then? I bet my own nuggets you know the name before I drop it!

It’s your one and only, Labour Party wonder-boy, man who I won’t name! At the time, he was Chairman of STC and also a councillor on BDC, which means he sat on both sides of this deal. From 2019 until January 2025 he was Leader of BDC, the tenant that moved in without a completed lease. And he’s the same man who resigned from STC just three weeks after my open letter asking for his resignation landed on his doormat. If you enjoy the rare moments when the anti-Labour-sleaze opposition wins, you can read that letter again here:
https://shirebrook247.com/2025/08/02/open-letter-to-cllr-steve-fritchley/

PROOF IS IN THE STC CHAMBER!
But don’t take my word for it. If you ever get into the main meeting room of the Town Hall, you will see a wooden board with the name of every Chair of the Council. And yes, wonder-boy was Chair from 2014 to 2016, while this deal was being put together. Then he made space for another Labour Party genius, Cllr A. Anderson, Chair from 2016 to 2018, who was in the chair when STC signed the Agreement in April 2017.

Look closer and it gets even better. From 2003 to 2018, the chair of Shirebrook Town Council passed between those two men like a family heirloom: Anderson, wonder-boy, Anderson, wonder-boy, Anderson, wonder-boy, Anderson. Fifteen years, two names. Wonder-boy alone has sat in that chair five times. Democracy, Shirebrook-style.

Labour members- how could you allow this??? How you can still vote on that corruption party? You think they changed just because they showed wonder-boy into the shadows? Oh naivete of socialist is endless…

A LEASE HAS NOT YET BEEN COMPLETED.
The title of this chapter is lifted directly from the FOI reply. STC signed the Agreement in 2017, but the lease itself was never completed. It’s in limbo, and has been for nine and a half years. Cllr Jane Yates (Labour)! Do you see that? Am I lying? Will you bless us with yet another locked Facebook post explaining why a deal between Labour-run STC and Labour-run BDC still isn’t finished? Or would you rather continue the Labour tradition of sleaze in silence? Don’t answer – we all know…

WHAT WERE THEY DOING?
What exactly was that Labour super-majority doing all this time? Planning fireworks displays while one of the biggest assets Shirebrook Town Council owns sat in limbo like an unwanted relative at Christmas? I don’t get it. I’m just a working-class bloke, and this time it’s way above my pay grade. I have no clue why this has been in limbo for almost ten years.

NEW STC, OLD PROBLEMS
So here’s where we are. BDC sits in part of our Town Hall. STC owns the building. And for nine and a half years, neither side has bothered to finish the paperwork. Nobody went to court. Nobody went to the Land Registry. Both councils just… shrugged and carried on. When I first read that FOI reply, my reaction was simple: how can this be legal? The answer is that it’s a mess. BDC has a signed promise of a lease, but not the lease itself. One of the biggest assets in town is sitting on a legal half-finished job, and everybody has been happy to act as if it’s done. Why?

And the new councillors? For them, it’s just one more problem to untangle after decades of Labour sleaze and incompetence. Good luck, new councillors! I want to help, but Labour voted ‘NO’ at the co-option meetings. Just two years before that, most residents stayed home on election day. You get what you vote for. Remember that in May 2027.

AI TO THE RESCUE
Just for lolz, I pasted the whole thing (the FOI reply and the lease) into my trusty AI assistant and asked for help understanding it. What I got back was a 1,300-word masterpiece of pure bureaucratic poetry. I got bored halfway through, but I gritted my teeth and finished it like a good little taxpayer. Here’s the bottom line:

In April 2017, STC and BDC signed an agreement promising BDC a 199-year lease at the princely sum of £1 a year. The actual lease? Never completed. More than nine years later, BDC is still saying, in writing, that it’s waiting for Shirebrook Town Council to finish the job. So was it signed? The agreement, yes. The lease itself, no, and BDC says so in black and white.

THEN I WENT A STEP FURTHER.
Then I did something I’d never done before. I asked the AI for three to five sentences of its own opinion on the situation. Here it is:
“In my view, it’s a basic governance failure: a partner council has occupied part of one of STC’s most valuable assets for years on the strength of a deal nobody finished turning into a lease. The agreement contains terms residents deserve to know about, including BDC paying 40% of the build cost and each council getting first refusal if the other wants to sell its interest. The questions that matter now are why the lease was never completed, whether BDC has been charged its share of insurance and running costs, and who at STC will finish the job.”

So I’m asking the Labour leadership directly: why has this never been finished? Give me the reasons, and don’t blame STC – you WERE STC! Admit it openly: the Labour supermajority on STC didn’t complete the lease because […………………].

All the documentation is below.

Sylwester Zwierzyński
info@shirebrook247.com
Lead picture: close up of lease so-called draft.
FOI reply:

(PDF deal is too big to place in article. This is link to S247 Google Drive where you can download it or look at it: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jxOCc3G0o37TJaDgvPmdDs6ruYuKCFx9/view?usp=sharing )