FOI Request Council Commercial Property Purchases

Request 101001494799

I would like to exercise my right under freedom of information laws to find out how much your authority has invested in commercial property in the following years:

2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017 to date

If the value of the purchases in any one year amount to more than £10 million could I please be given a brief description of the purchases and their individual value.

Please also include how much has been borrowed from the Public Works Loan Board to help facilitate any purchases in each of these years and the agreed interest rate for repayment and term of loan.

Response 24-05-2017

2012 - £0

2013 - £0

2014 - £0

2015 - £0

2016 - £220,000

2017 to date - £767,500

The funding for the Council’s capital programme comes from a number of sources including government general capital grant, temporary borrowing from sources other than the Public Works Loan Board (PWLB) and the PWLB.

The Council’s overall borrowing requirement is carefully monitored and managed in order to keep borrowing costs to a minimum. Borrowing from the PWLB is not for any specific asset and the funding for the total capital spend is managed as a whole.

The 2016 acquisition fell into the financial year 2015/16. During that year borrowing from the PWLB represented 26% of capital spend which would equate to £52,000 for this property.  During the year, two 10 year loans and one 15 year loan were taken out with the PWLB. The rates secured on the 10 year loans were 1.99% and 1.50% and 1.84% on the 15 year loan. The Council did not take out any borrowing with the PWLB during 2016/17.