\n<\/p>\n
Lucy Powell urged ministers to reconsider costly legal proceedings against a property development firm in her constituency founded by a Labour donor, in a move that could have saved his company millions, the Guardian can disclose.<\/p>\n
Powell, who is the favourite to be elected Labour\u2019s deputy leader this week, wrote to Angela Rayner on behalf of Urban Splash, a property developer in Manchester founded by party donor Tom Bloxham.<\/p>\n
Powell asked Rayner, who was then housing secretary, to reconsider the government\u2019s \u201cdisproportionate\u201d legal action against the company, days after bumping into Bloxham at a Labour party fundraising dinner. She had met company executives about the case two weeks prior.<\/p>\n
Asked about the intervention, made while she was a cabinet minister, Powell said she had acted in her capacity as a constituency MP and had done so \u201copenly and transparently\u201d. She denied she had done anything inappropriate, though MPs are under huge scrutiny after a series of lobbying scandals.<\/p>\n
This case refers to a company called Urban Splash, which was asked to pay back \u00a349m of taxpayers\u2019 money in March 2024 when the Conservatives were in power.<\/p>\n
The money had been spent on making seven buildings in central Manchester compliant with post-Grenfell building safety laws, according to the housing department.<\/p>\n
Ministers applied to a property tribunal for a remediation order to legally require the developer to stump up for the works.<\/p>\n
But in her letter dated 10 December 2024 and seen by the Guardian, Powell asked that \u201cevery effort is made to engage with Urban Splash outside of lengthy legal proceedings\u201d and warned that these would \u201cultimately cost the taxpayer and will likely put Urban Splash out of business\u201d.<\/p>\n
She attached a letter she had received from Bloxham on 5 December, where he said it had been good to see her at the Rose Network event, which took place the night before.<\/p>\n
In his letter he accused the housing department of \u201cincreasingly vindictively pursuing us with heavy handed lawyers\u201d while seeking to turn Urban Splash into \u201ca scape goat\u201d to distract from its \u201ccontinued mistakes and incompetence\u201d.<\/p>\n
He wrote that he was \u201cfeeling betrayed by a government I helped get elected and have so much hope for\u201d, and linked to a video celebrating the developer\u2019s 30-year history, which he said he had shown Powell when they spoke.<\/p>\n
Bloxham gave \u00a38,807 to the Labour party in 2020, according to Electoral Commission records, and previously donated to Tony Lloyd, Powell\u2019s predecessor as MP for Manchester Central.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Powell said: \u201cIn her capacity as a constituency MP Lucy has made many, many representations to the government and to relevant agencies over many years about difficult cladding issues on behalf of leaseholders and met with many of those involved including residents, freeholders and developers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn that capacity in mid-November, Lucy met with Urban Splash for a constituency surgery meeting in Manchester, where they raised the difficulties they were facing. She asked for further details in writing so that she could make a representation on their behalf as their constituency MP which she then did in the usual way transparently and openly. She was clear in all correspondence that developers should pay their fair share of remediation costs.\u201d<\/p>\n
A source close to Powell said she held a meeting with Bloxham in her constituency on 15 November 2024, where she discussed his case, watched the video he referenced and asked him to put his arguments in writing. The source said they then bumped into each other at the party fundraising event on 4 December, which involved more than 500 people, and that he had written to her the following day.<\/p>\n
Powell\u2019s office said she never received or facilitated any donations in cash or in kind from Bloxham or Urban Splash, except in one instance before 2020, when Bloxham sponsored prizes in her annual schoolchildren\u2019s Christmas card competition to the value of up to \u00a3300.<\/p>\n
Powell\u2019s constituency office is housed in Beehive Mill, a building regenerated and owned by Urban Splash. Her office said she paid market rent for the premises, which were found by the MPs\u2019 expenses regulator.<\/p>\n
Powell met Bloxham and another Urban Splash executive in her constituency office on 4 April and wrote to Rayner again on 22 April and 6 August urging ministers to hold a meeting with the company, which she warned could go insolvent as a result of the action. She stated in all cases that she was writing in her capacity as a constituency MP.<\/p>\n
In his letter to Powell in December, Bloxham wrote that Michael Gove\u2019s \u201chistoric, huge mishandling of the post-Grenfell response\u201d alongside \u201cthe ministry\u2019s and its advisers\u2019 continued mistakes and incompetence\u201d were \u201cthreatening Urban Splash\u2019s very existence and the new government\u2019s growth agenda\u201d.<\/p>\n
He wrote that the \u201ccontinued pursuit of the RCO [remediation order] is not fair, just or equitable for a number of reasons.\u201d.<\/p>\n
He argued that ministers should \u201csit down and have an open conversation about the merits of the case and agree a deal which US [Urban Splash] can afford\u201d rather than \u201cspend years in pointless litigation blowing \u00a3millions of tax payers money on legal fees\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said that Urban Splash faced a bill of up to \u00a348m when the company was worth only \u00a327m. He said the department had incorrectly estimated its value at \u00a375m and that \u201crather than trying to mediate or negotiate\u201d it had sought to include other companies with the same directors as Urban Splash in its legal action.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for Urban Splash said the legal action was \u201can ongoing process so we cannot comment\u201d.<\/p>\n
There is no indication that the government took any action in Urban Splash\u2019s favour after receiving Powell\u2019s letters.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said: \u201cWe are taking ongoing legal action against Urban Splash to make them pay for fixing homes they are responsible for. We make no apology for taking strong action to make people\u2019s homes safe, and are absolutely determined to hold developers to account.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lucy Powell urged ministers to reconsider costly legal proceedings against a property development firm in her constituency founded by a Labour donor, in a move that could have saved his company millions, the Guardian can disclose. Powell, who is the favourite to be elected Labour\u2019s deputy leader this week, wrote to Angela Rayner on behalf<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29635,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[919,12328,1466,134,324,1165,321,4439,4964,322],"class_list":{"0":"post-29634","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-action","9":"tag-donors","10":"tag-firm","11":"tag-labour","12":"tag-legal","13":"tag-lucy","14":"tag-ministers","15":"tag-powell","16":"tag-rethink","17":"tag-urged"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29634\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}