Norman_Conquest
Well-known member
Apparently, he is Ben the King maker - :rolleyes:
Teesworks Scandal…
- Thread starter Cat’s Lives
- Start date
ThePrisoner
Well-known member
Ah. The old CCS scam. Pretend technology that will allow the fossil fuel industry to keep going for a couple more decades.
ThePrisoner
Well-known member
Anyone got the full Private Eye story on this?
Yes but I can’t put a picture in here as too large.. are you on BlueSky?
ThePrisoner
Well-known member
Not yet unfortunately.
I’ll try this…
TEES FREEPORT
Tag
team
how the company providing security at the UK's largest freeport is run by a man still serving a long prison sentence on licence for leading a major drug-running network - and, the Eye understands, still wearing a tag
- has reached evidence-defying levels.
Contracts for providing security across the regeneration site at the heart of the freeport, complete with a light-touch customs zone of the sort notorious for illicit activity, were handed to Hartlepool-based NE Security Ltd, owned by local ex-boxer David Garside Sr, in 2021 and 2022.
When the Eye presented evidence that Garside's son, David Garside Jr, in fact runs the company even though he is yet to complete his sentence of 11 years and eight months for operating a major drugs network (following a conviction for violence), TVCA promised to investigate.
Garside Jr - whose partner now owns 20 percent of NE Security - had signed a company document (the only public one with a company manager's name on it) as "managing director and could be seen on LinkedIn offering to do business for the company. The Eye has also had confirmation from people familiar with work on the site that Garside Jr runs the show. But NE Security insists he is merely a "health and safety adviser".
Performing a security or management role would be illegal as he is not, for obvious reasons, licensed.
TVCA's chief legal officer Emma Simson now says there is "no evidence" for the Eye's allegation (a signed document in the man's own hand apparently not counting as evidence) and, bizarrely, that there is no "corroborating documentation" (except, er, the document).
She has been "assured by NE Security and
"verified the same with senior management on site" that "Mr Garside Junior works solely in a health and safety capacity". His own words on LinkedIn show this is a blatant lie that TVCA is happy to swallow. Both NE Security and TVCA have declined to explain why Garside Jr should sign as "managing director" if he was not a manager.
It's a mystery why the taxpayer-funded
TVCA should be so protective of a dubious private company. But there is the small matter of a f9m, two-year new security contract due to start on 1 November (ie last week). The businessmen coining it in from the development site, Chris Musgrave and Martin Corney, hold the whip hand on big decisions - and Musgrave is a long-time friend of Garside Sr. NE Security was brought in, replacing more established security providers, not long after the men had acquired their role on the site. TVCA refused to say if the new contract has been signed - although NE Security is visibly operating across the site.
Service history
NE Security was always a risky choice for a flagship freeport. The company boasts of having been formed in 1995, but this is also untrue,
As Eye 1581 reported, the business was previously run by another Garside Sr company, NES Services Ltd, which was placed into administration in 2016 after getting a £1.4m bill from HM Revenue & Customs over a failed tax avoidance scheme. The security business ended up in NE Security Ltd, while the taxpayer and other creditors were left to whistle,
More than eight years on, with claims
Емел
FREEPORT
received totalling £2.7m, liquidators continue to investigate suspicious activities. These include "the transfer of a business at an undervalue" and the "repayment of a director's loan by the company". The liquidators have recovered £€500,000 against an insurance bond held by the previous administrator, Gordon Craig, which pays out in the event of "fraud and dishonesty by the practitioner". Garside Sr appears none too keen to help, the liquidators adding that "we have reached out to the sole director of the company for an interview but to date he has not attended" (he is said to spend a lot of time in Dubai).
Bizarre as it may be that NE Security won taxpayer-funded contracts given this history, these are certainly paying well now.
Accounting information examined by the Eye for 2023/24 shows NE Security was paid £3.4m
- significantly more than the £2m that the value put on the contracts originally would have generated in the year. TVCA again refused to explain the increase.
Cash flow
MEANWHILE, TVCA's South Tees
Development Corporation (STDC) also forked out €2.5m in legal fees to Mayfair law firm
Forsters last year, in a doomed attempt to shake down local port company PD Ports over the latter's rights of access to its own port across land owned by STDC (anticipated fruits of up to £54m had STDC won would have gone to Corney and Musgrave).
Total fees up to March are now £3.5m, with more to come. Then there will be the vast majority of PD Ports' costs after the judge declared it "clearly the overall winner". PD puts these at £2.7m (it used cheaper local lawyers).
The total cost to Tessiders of a ridiculous action will be around tom.
Tees strainer
wwintegratedsertements toty
with integrated settlements for
mayoral combined authorities that can show exemplary management of public money," declared the Labour party manifesto in June.
What this meant was that control over how taxpayer cash is spent would only be devolved to those who can be trusted with it. And in the budget Rachel Reeves duly identified her star pupils: Greater Manchester and West Midlands combined authorities, who'll get their settlements from the start of the 2025-26 financial year; and Liverpool city region combined authority and the North East, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire mayoral combined authorities (from 2026-27).
One conspicuous absentee from those bodies to be trusted with spending their own pocket money was... Tees Valley Combined Authority, Its mayor, Lord (Ben) Houchen, was left to sulk on social media: "Looking at the budget, here's what's in it for the people of Teesside, Darlington and Hartlepool",
, above a picture
of a blank piece of paper. If only he and his naughty friends had been a bit more careful with the last slug of public money, it might have been different...
ALFIE BEST
Sites unsound
Speured b Die up Ki Monace, Where
he moved to escape paying taxes on the £947m fortune amassed through a string of park home sites. Back home, his business is dealing with authorities that are left unimpressed by his super-rich lifestyle.
Residents on Best's sites have complained of excessive charging, poor maintenance and harassment (Eyes passim). The issues became so widespread that residents formed their own group, the Wyldecrest Parks Residents
While Best now runs his Wyldecrest empire remotely, his man on the ground is estates director David Sunderland, whose recent attempt to renew the licence at Willow Park in Queensferry, North Wales, ran into trouble with Flintshire county council. Willow Park's two-bedroomed homes cost around £150,000 and are reserved for the over-50s.
According to Wyldecrest, the site is "designed for a peaceful, stress-free retirement", but it doesn't seem to be stress-free for Flintshire's licensing committee.
It refused the site's licence on the grounds
satisfied Sunderland was "a fit and
proper person" to manage the site.
They noted that he ran a portfolio of more than 80 residential mobile
home sites and that this threw into doubt his ability to manage Willow Park properly.
More damningly, the committee said Sunderland had failed to provide a fire risk assessment or electrical installation condition report for the park, and that "the existing condition of the site is such that no fit and proper [manager] would allow the site to deteriorate to such an unsatisfactory condition". The committee also cited concerns over the unsatisfactory water and electricity supply, and unsafe roads and pathways that impede access to emergency vehicles.
The criticisms will be all too familiar to other Wyldecrest park home residents, such as those at Penwortham Park, near the Ribble Valley, who won a court victory to withhold a percentage of their pitch fees (Eye 1599) after Best's firm decided to build new homes over a communal green area and a visitor car park.
Their site was not being maintained properly and had drainage problems, poor roads and exposed wires.
The regulations for a "fit and proper person" test for mobile home sites came into force in 2021 to protect residents against mismanagement or harassment. Willow Park's owner will now be given the opportunity to put forward a replacement manager or to appeal the decision at tribunal.
In 2021 five management companies, all under the control of Wyldecrest, failed the fit and proper persons test at five park home sites in West Sussex. They brought an appeal against Arun district council's decision in 2022 but lost: the tribunal found that the management firms were mere "straw companies" with no employees or assets.
Has the latest ruling by Flintshire county council troubled Alfie Best? He's been busy with a flying visit to the UK to hold the
"Best Wealth London Summit", a day-long event where ticket holders paid €147 for a
"pure immersion into making, multiplying & maintaining your wealth!"
TEES FREEPORT
Tag
team
how the company providing security at the UK's largest freeport is run by a man still serving a long prison sentence on licence for leading a major drug-running network - and, the Eye understands, still wearing a tag
- has reached evidence-defying levels.
Contracts for providing security across the regeneration site at the heart of the freeport, complete with a light-touch customs zone of the sort notorious for illicit activity, were handed to Hartlepool-based NE Security Ltd, owned by local ex-boxer David Garside Sr, in 2021 and 2022.
When the Eye presented evidence that Garside's son, David Garside Jr, in fact runs the company even though he is yet to complete his sentence of 11 years and eight months for operating a major drugs network (following a conviction for violence), TVCA promised to investigate.
Garside Jr - whose partner now owns 20 percent of NE Security - had signed a company document (the only public one with a company manager's name on it) as "managing director and could be seen on LinkedIn offering to do business for the company. The Eye has also had confirmation from people familiar with work on the site that Garside Jr runs the show. But NE Security insists he is merely a "health and safety adviser".
Performing a security or management role would be illegal as he is not, for obvious reasons, licensed.
TVCA's chief legal officer Emma Simson now says there is "no evidence" for the Eye's allegation (a signed document in the man's own hand apparently not counting as evidence) and, bizarrely, that there is no "corroborating documentation" (except, er, the document).
She has been "assured by NE Security and
"verified the same with senior management on site" that "Mr Garside Junior works solely in a health and safety capacity". His own words on LinkedIn show this is a blatant lie that TVCA is happy to swallow. Both NE Security and TVCA have declined to explain why Garside Jr should sign as "managing director" if he was not a manager.
It's a mystery why the taxpayer-funded
TVCA should be so protective of a dubious private company. But there is the small matter of a f9m, two-year new security contract due to start on 1 November (ie last week). The businessmen coining it in from the development site, Chris Musgrave and Martin Corney, hold the whip hand on big decisions - and Musgrave is a long-time friend of Garside Sr. NE Security was brought in, replacing more established security providers, not long after the men had acquired their role on the site. TVCA refused to say if the new contract has been signed - although NE Security is visibly operating across the site.
Service history
NE Security was always a risky choice for a flagship freeport. The company boasts of having been formed in 1995, but this is also untrue,
As Eye 1581 reported, the business was previously run by another Garside Sr company, NES Services Ltd, which was placed into administration in 2016 after getting a £1.4m bill from HM Revenue & Customs over a failed tax avoidance scheme. The security business ended up in NE Security Ltd, while the taxpayer and other creditors were left to whistle,
More than eight years on, with claims
Емел
FREEPORT
received totalling £2.7m, liquidators continue to investigate suspicious activities. These include "the transfer of a business at an undervalue" and the "repayment of a director's loan by the company". The liquidators have recovered £€500,000 against an insurance bond held by the previous administrator, Gordon Craig, which pays out in the event of "fraud and dishonesty by the practitioner". Garside Sr appears none too keen to help, the liquidators adding that "we have reached out to the sole director of the company for an interview but to date he has not attended" (he is said to spend a lot of time in Dubai).
Bizarre as it may be that NE Security won taxpayer-funded contracts given this history, these are certainly paying well now.
Accounting information examined by the Eye for 2023/24 shows NE Security was paid £3.4m
- significantly more than the £2m that the value put on the contracts originally would have generated in the year. TVCA again refused to explain the increase.
Cash flow
MEANWHILE, TVCA's South Tees
Development Corporation (STDC) also forked out €2.5m in legal fees to Mayfair law firm
Forsters last year, in a doomed attempt to shake down local port company PD Ports over the latter's rights of access to its own port across land owned by STDC (anticipated fruits of up to £54m had STDC won would have gone to Corney and Musgrave).
Total fees up to March are now £3.5m, with more to come. Then there will be the vast majority of PD Ports' costs after the judge declared it "clearly the overall winner". PD puts these at £2.7m (it used cheaper local lawyers).
The total cost to Tessiders of a ridiculous action will be around tom.
Tees strainer
wwintegratedsertements toty
with integrated settlements for
mayoral combined authorities that can show exemplary management of public money," declared the Labour party manifesto in June.
What this meant was that control over how taxpayer cash is spent would only be devolved to those who can be trusted with it. And in the budget Rachel Reeves duly identified her star pupils: Greater Manchester and West Midlands combined authorities, who'll get their settlements from the start of the 2025-26 financial year; and Liverpool city region combined authority and the North East, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire mayoral combined authorities (from 2026-27).
One conspicuous absentee from those bodies to be trusted with spending their own pocket money was... Tees Valley Combined Authority, Its mayor, Lord (Ben) Houchen, was left to sulk on social media: "Looking at the budget, here's what's in it for the people of Teesside, Darlington and Hartlepool",
, above a picture
of a blank piece of paper. If only he and his naughty friends had been a bit more careful with the last slug of public money, it might have been different...
ALFIE BEST
Sites unsound
Speured b Die up Ki Monace, Where
he moved to escape paying taxes on the £947m fortune amassed through a string of park home sites. Back home, his business is dealing with authorities that are left unimpressed by his super-rich lifestyle.
Residents on Best's sites have complained of excessive charging, poor maintenance and harassment (Eyes passim). The issues became so widespread that residents formed their own group, the Wyldecrest Parks Residents
While Best now runs his Wyldecrest empire remotely, his man on the ground is estates director David Sunderland, whose recent attempt to renew the licence at Willow Park in Queensferry, North Wales, ran into trouble with Flintshire county council. Willow Park's two-bedroomed homes cost around £150,000 and are reserved for the over-50s.
According to Wyldecrest, the site is "designed for a peaceful, stress-free retirement", but it doesn't seem to be stress-free for Flintshire's licensing committee.
It refused the site's licence on the grounds
satisfied Sunderland was "a fit and
proper person" to manage the site.
They noted that he ran a portfolio of more than 80 residential mobile
home sites and that this threw into doubt his ability to manage Willow Park properly.
More damningly, the committee said Sunderland had failed to provide a fire risk assessment or electrical installation condition report for the park, and that "the existing condition of the site is such that no fit and proper [manager] would allow the site to deteriorate to such an unsatisfactory condition". The committee also cited concerns over the unsatisfactory water and electricity supply, and unsafe roads and pathways that impede access to emergency vehicles.
The criticisms will be all too familiar to other Wyldecrest park home residents, such as those at Penwortham Park, near the Ribble Valley, who won a court victory to withhold a percentage of their pitch fees (Eye 1599) after Best's firm decided to build new homes over a communal green area and a visitor car park.
Their site was not being maintained properly and had drainage problems, poor roads and exposed wires.
The regulations for a "fit and proper person" test for mobile home sites came into force in 2021 to protect residents against mismanagement or harassment. Willow Park's owner will now be given the opportunity to put forward a replacement manager or to appeal the decision at tribunal.
In 2021 five management companies, all under the control of Wyldecrest, failed the fit and proper persons test at five park home sites in West Sussex. They brought an appeal against Arun district council's decision in 2022 but lost: the tribunal found that the management firms were mere "straw companies" with no employees or assets.
Has the latest ruling by Flintshire county council troubled Alfie Best? He's been busy with a flying visit to the UK to hold the
"Best Wealth London Summit", a day-long event where ticket holders paid €147 for a
"pure immersion into making, multiplying & maintaining your wealth!"