Lease row goes to 11th hour

Ballygally Community Development Association (BCDA) has said that everything is in place to start building the new shop and community facility in the village car park – except a lease to be signed by the local authority.

But there is now light at the end of the tunnel for the group of volunteers, as the council has agreed to put pen to paper on Monday, September 13.

During a heated two-and-a-half-hour exchange at Smiley Buildings on Monday night, councillors debated whether the lease should be signed “before all the t’s were crossed and the i’s dotted”.

Chief executive Geraldine McGahey advised that there remained a number of outstanding statutory issues that needed to be resolved. However, she added that members were free to ignore her advice if they wished.

In an eight-page letter addressed to BCDA on September 2, Mrs McGahey said the council was “obliged to ensure that the guidance issued by Government is followed and that statutory obligations are satisfied”.

To this end, the chief executive provided BCDA with a list of items that she said must be addressed before the signing of the lease, including a breakdown of costs, detailed drawings of the proposals and reassurances that the community facility would not displace existing businesses within the village.

But Coast Road councillor Winston Fulton blasted Mrs McGahey’s list of requirements and asked: “Why are these matters only being raised now when the builder is on site and ready to go?” The chief executive said it had only recently become apparent that the council did not have all the relevant information.

The council agreed in May, 2009 to enter into a lease agreement with BCDA and has already pledged 250,000 towards the project, as well as making available the land required for the new building. The Big Lottery Fund has set aside 405,840 for the project, which is part of Village SOS, a televised venture with the BBC to assist six rural villages across the UK.

And 109,000 has been pledged by the Rural Development Programme.

In her letter to BCDA, Mrs McGahey stated: “It is not our intent to cause delay to the project or to jeopardise any funding.

“To that end, I have fully discussed these matters with Big Lottery officers and have been given assurances that your award of grant will not be negatively impacted upon.”

However, Coast Road representative Brian Dunn warned that if the lease was not signed by Monday, the project would collapse.

He added: “This project has a 10-month construction period and if the lease is not signed within the next week the building will not be completed on time. The members of BCDA are good, upstanding people and I have every confidence they will keep up their end of the bargain.

“This project is to be shown on television and we can either have a programme which shows Larne council delivering a successful project on time, or a programme showing that Larne says ‘no’ to everything.”

Cllr Dunn proposed that members agree to sign the lease at the next council meeting, on Monday. However, Ald Roy Beggs made a counter-proposal that members should defer any decision on signing the lease until Monday, to see how BCDA had progressed. In the end, Cllr Dunn’s proposal was narrowly carried, with six votes for and five against.

Larne Town councillor Martin Wilson urged members of BCDA who were present at the meeting to try and have all the outstanding issues resolved before the signing of the lease on Monday. And he called on councillors to stop the “infighting” and start working together.

“Sitting here, cutting each other until we bleed to death, is not going to help the situation,” he said.

“Everyone wants the same thing at the end of the day and it is not like we are trying to fly people to the moon.BCDA deserve the utmost respect for the work that they do and the council should not be seen as a stumbling block.”

Speaking after the stormy meeting, BCDA chairman Jim McCurdy told the Larne Times he was disappointed that the lease had not been signed on Monday.

“This eleventh-hour decision could have been avoided had the chief executive taken a more proactive approach,” he claimed.

“We should have been in a position to start work on the site in June, but the one thing holding it all up was the signing of the lease.

“The council has given us a week to get all this sorted, but they are forgetting that the members of BCDA are all volunteers. I now have to rearrange my entire life to accommodate Larne council and work round the clock to try and put all the pieces in place by Monday.”

Sinn Fein spokesman in East Antrim, Oliver McMullan, said on Tuesday: “The council has come in with a list of requirements at the eleventh hour and they should have been presented to BCDA when the project was first agreed upon.

“No one is saying that these requirements are wrong, but why only give BCDA one week to get them sorted?

“This group needs all the help they can get and should not have more barriers thrown in their way. They have taken on an arduous task and must be commended.”

BCDA is to hold a public meeting at the Halfway House Hotel at 7.30pm on Thursday, September 16 to update residents on the project.