Cllr Mike Stoddart: Tax payer money, we have a right to know

IN AN effort to clear up the mystery of repayment of grant monies for schemes in Pembroke Dock, Hakin councillor Mike Stoddart has put down a notice of motion for the next meeting of Pembrokeshire County Council (PCC).

According to C llr Stoddart, in early 2014 developer Cathal McCosker offered to pay back the whole of the £180,000 in grants he had received for four projects (10 Meyrick Street and Nos 25, 27 and 29 Dimond Street) in Pembroke Dock.

The offer came after the council demanded that he should produce bank statements as proof of payment to the builder, as required by the grant agreement,

Cllr Stoddart claims that, during a meeting with officers from the Wales European Funding Office (WEFO) in the summer of 2014, he was told that, rather than produce the bank statements, Mr McCosker said he would repay all the monies received for the four properties with the Meyrick Street grant being paid back immediately and the rest within 12 months.

In the meantime, because of irregularities in the grant payments discovered by Cllr Stoddart, the council had to return the £180,000 to WEFO, so, until such time as the money is recovered from Mr McCosker, it isn’t available to support regeneration projects in Pembroke and Pembroke Dock.

That prompted him to put down a motion to the council meeting in December 2014 calling for all correspondence on the subject of grant repayments to be made available to elected members. That was not adopted, but council agreed on a recorded vote that members of the audit committee should have access to the documents on a confidential basis.

“It seems that the issue has disappeared into the long grass because nothing has been heard since” Mike Stoddart told the Herald.

During PCC’s public audit inspection in July 2015, the Hakin councillor discovered that an invoice had been raised against Mr McCosker for £189,000 – the amount of grant to be repaid.

However, there was no record of any repayments being made.

When he made enquiries with the council’s finance department he was told “Payments are being made and monitored but at the current level they will take years to recover”

Mike Stoddart has made a series of emails available to the Herald which paint a very confused picture.

On 31 March 2016 was told: “Mr McCosker is repaying the debt and the payments are going to an account in his personal name”

This email also contained an extract from a statement the council had made to the police: “A letter was received by PCC from Mr McCosker offering to repay the £189,000, this was dismissed.”

Clearly, the claim that the repayment offer had been “dismissed” was not consistent with the statement in the same email that “Mr McCosker is repaying the debt”

When Cllr Stoddart sought clarification he was told: “to date £18,000 has been collected towards the debt.”

So, two years after Mr McCosker offered to pay back the whole of the £180,000 within twelve months, only 10% has been collected and, for some as yet unexplained reason, that has been paid into an account in Mr McCosker’s personal name.

Mike Stoddart told the Herald: “This is taxpayers’ money and people have the right to know what is going on. When my notice of motion comes before the council I will be calling for a recorded vote so that the electorate can see who is for openness and transparency and who isn’t”