ESBC and Molson Coors
On November 4 an email was sent to all East Staffordshire borough councillors by a council officer. It said there was an inaccuracy in the notes we’d published of a meeting between Chair of the Burton and Uttoxeter Labour Party Paul Walker, party member Elaine Pritchard and two directors of Molson Coors: corporate affairs director Kate Macnamara and HR and facilities director Adam Firby. Those notes can be read in full HERE.
As we all know, after agreeing to sell Carling House head office (and other properties) to the council, Molson Coors decided to close the National Brewery Centre in preparation for moving its Carling House staff there. The email to all councillors, from the Council’s Interim Head of Regeneration, Thomas Deery, said: “I
would like to clarify an inaccuracy that reads as follows:
‘Asked if Molson Coors had been looking to move its staff from Carling House to a new location, Molson Coors confirmed that they were not. They were approached by the council to sell and saw this as an opportunity for the historic buildings on its site that are not currently used (Bass House and the Water Tower) to be opened up to the public as part of the council’s regeneration vision’.
“As you know, the council has stated that it did not make the initial approach to Molson Coors regarding the High Street property and I can confirm that I have copies of emails between the Chief Executive and Molson Coors’ Managing Director from 2020 that substantiates this position and sets out Molson Coors’ intent to relocate their Head Office site as part of their existing estates strategy, which stemmed from 2019.”
Since then, Paul has had conversations with both the chief executive and Mr Deery and seen the emails mentioned above. We have taken time to consider our response and done as much research as possible to try and get to the facts.
Scrutiny committee
On November 24 there was a scrutiny committee meeting where the main business was a discussion of the decision taken in March 2022 to buy the Molson Coors properties. During the evening, Conservative Councillor Simon Gaskin asked Leader of the Council George Allen if Molson Coors had ever intimated that they would close the NBC if the council bought the buildings. Councillor Allen replied, no, not until one week before the public announcement of the closure in early September.
At our meeting on November 1, Molson Coors confirmed that it was in June that both the council and Planning Solutions (who had the contract to run the NBC) were informed that the NBC was one of a number of options that Molson Coors was considering as the new home of its Carling House employees. September 6 was the date when it confirmed to the council that the NBC was the final choice.
What Molson Coors has told us
1. When Paul wrote to Molson Coors’ Managing Director Philip Whitehead at the start of October requesting a meeting to raise concerns voiced to us by party members and the wider community, we received a personal reply. This included the statement: “When the council initially approached us about the potential purchase of our existing head office site as part of their plans to redevelop the town centre, we were happy to support their plans.” This paragraph can be seen below in a screenshot of a longer extract from the letter.
2. After the email to all councillors, we contacted Kate Macnamara to ask if she could provide further clarification. She expanded on the information that she had given us in the meeting and wrote: “Since our head office site has been in the Local Plan since 2015, as you might expect we have over time considered what our relocation options in Burton could be in the event the plan moved ahead.”
This refers to the Local Plan adopted by East Staffordshire Borough Council that earmarked the Molson Coors head office site for future mixed-use development and opportunities to link the town and the Washlands.
Kate’s email continued: “As a responsible large local employer, at different times we have privately shared options that were being explored with the council, which have included investing in our current site, given it wasn’t clear that the Local Plan would progress, or relocating inside or outside the town centre.”
During the Covid pandemic, Kate said they paused any thoughts of moving. She added: “It was only as a result of the council securing funding for the regeneration of the town [the Town Deal funding] that we entered into discussions to sell our High Street head office site.”
This tallies with a statement that Molson Coors gave to the local press in March 2021 where they said that talks had taken place with the council but said that the head office was not up for sale at that time – https://www.staffordshire-live.co.uk/news/molson-coors-says-burton-offices-5241119.
It was also during March 2021 that the Government awarded Burton-on-Trent £22.8m following the
December 2020 submission of the Burton Town Investment Plan. https://www.eaststaffsbc.gov.uk/es-news/burton-upon-trent-awarded-%C2%A3228m-
government%E2%80%99s-towns-fund-programme
Each project then had to create a business case that complied with HM Treasury’s Green Book process. Some projects then fell by the wayside, but finally in August 2022, funding was approved for four projects:
High Street Linkages: £15,726,072
Improvement of the Trent and Mersey Canal Towpath: £1,455,073
Cycle Network Enhancements: £1,364,789
Burton & South Derbyshire College Specialist Education Offer: £2,969,014
It is from this funding that the council now proposes to buy the Molson Coors buildings, with the help of additional S106 monies (given to local authorities by developers of new housing in the borough) earmarked for affordable housing – because the High Street plan includes creation of 22 first homes for keyworkers.
At the start of August 2022, the council submitted a further bid for £20million from the second round of Levelling Up funding for three projects: revitalising the Market Quarter; Creating an indoor multi-activity action sports centre and investing in Bass House. A decision on this was due in October/November but has been delayed due to months of national political turmoil.
3. After seeing the emails from 2019/2020 between ESBC’s chief executive and Mr Whitehead, Paul said: “Clearly there were discussions about the Molson Coors’ High Street site but I saw nothing to disprove Molson Coors’ claim that the pandemic made them pause any thought of relocating from Carling House until the council approached them to sell after securing Town Deal funding. Kate Macnamara told me she had not given this extra detail about earlier discussions because they were private and commercially sensitive discussions with the council at the time and Molson Coors’ circumstances were very different post-pandemic.
Why does this matter?
Many people in this town feel they have been excluded from having any meaningful say in how this once-in-a-lifetime Government cash injection is spent on regeneration of our town centre. Communication from the council has been poor since the closure of the NBC was announced. Its last public statement on the issue was posted on its website and shared on social media on September 14. https://www.eaststaffsbc.gov.uk/es-news/frequently-asked-questions-regarding-closure-national-brewery-centre.
This is why there remains confusion about the chain of events, with Molson Coors and the council leadership giving different accounts. But those members of the public who attended the scrutiny committee on November 24 would have heard Council Leader George Allen make a claim that Labour councillors are against regeneration of Burton. Nothing could be further from the truth. We want to see Burton and the families who live here thrive and we want to see the local economy grow, but we believe passionately in the right of local communities to drive the ideas for how Government money is spent. Government money is not free cash. It comes from the taxes that we, our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren have yet to pay.
Paul Walker called on Councillor Allen to withdraw his disrespectful claim, but he refused. Labour believes that the people, businesses, organisations and charities in this town are full of creative and innovative ideas and they should have had more opportunities to get involved in shaping the regeneration plans. Instead a small, unelected Town Deal Board has been the council’s main sounding board since 2019 and the rest of us have been given basic ‘tick-box’ surveys to complete so that the council can show Government it has met its duty to consult.
The Bass House risk
At the scrutiny committee the Conservative councillors, who have the majority, voted to take no further action on calls from Independent and Labour councillors to review the risks of the decision taken in March 2022 to spend £5.2 million on purchasing the Molson Coors buildings, including BassHouse.
The Conservative members of the committee accepted the recommendations of officers and the council leadership that the risks were reasonable and had in fact reduced since March.
It is our belief that things have changed dramatically since March. The Bank of England expects the UK to face a “very challenging” two-year slump and says it will fall into the longest-ever recession https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63471725
Inflation stood at 11.1% in October. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12196322
Bass House has been empty for some 10 years and is a huge, Grade 2 Listed building. As such only certain types of material can be used in its refurbishment and skilled tradesmen will be needed for many tasks. We are aware that this country faces a skills shortage and that the cost of many building materials has risen faster and higher than the rate of inflation.
It has recently been revealed that spiralling inflation has already reduced the value of levelling up funding already awarded across the country by some £576 million. This makes it inevitable that some projects will be delayed, downsized or scrapped altogether. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/labour-say-tory-levelling-up-28592001
At the scrutiny committee, Conservative councillors said they were confident that Burton would secure the extra Government funding it needs to re-purpose Bass House and if it didn’t they would look to acquire alternative sources of funding. They specifically mentioned the Arts Council (which has made swingeing cuts in its funding to arts bodies this year) and Heritage Lottery funding as possible alternatives.
The George Allen beer-chucking plaza
At the scrutiny committee, Councilllor Allen spoke about the ‘exciting’ ‘fantastic’ and ‘phenomenal’ regeneration plans. He singled out the proposed open-air plaza, currently scheduled to be built close to the library and in the shadow of the historic Water Tower. He said this will give us the opportunity to host events we have been unable to hold in the town centre to date due to lack of space. The chief example he gave was sport on giant screens. He talked about watching TV coverage of other cities and seeing all the beer thrown up in the air at an exciting moment. Wouldn’t it be great to do that in Burton, he asked?
You decide.