This painting of Birchington didn’t get finished as I had to
get back to Ramsgate for School’s Out, ‘fraid to say I rushed at it a bit at the
end.
There is a letter from PwC to The DfT doing the rounds at
the moment, it’s in the form of a pdf file so a picture of the beginning and an
ocr of the text underneath, as I don’t know how to post pdfs on social media apart
from leaving people to download the file.
PwC
Dpartment for Transport
Great Minster House
33 Horseferry Road
London SW1P 4DR
For the attention of **** and ***
26 March 2015
Dear**** and****
Manston Airport Review
Pricewaterhouse Coopers LLP (“PwC” or “we”) is pleased to have
been appointed as the independent consultant to undertake a review of the
documents supplied by Thanet District Council (“TDC”) and RiverOak Investment
Corp LLC (“RiverOak”) to the Department for Transport (“DfT” or “you”).
We confirm that we have this week received the relevant
documents relating to the Council’s decision not to take forward a Compulsory
Purchase Order of the Manston Airport site with RiverOak as the indemnity partner.
These documents cover
the period from
4 May 2014 to 25
February 2015 and include financial information provided
by RiverOak.
We have agreed a work plan with you and commenced our work. The
objective is to provide DfT with a full report
by Friday 22 May 2015. The
report will address our scope of work and provide DfT with specific advice in
relation to:
1.
Any key considerations that TDC could have taken into account at
the time, based on a review of the information provided to TDC (at the time).
2.
Further key considerations that TDC may
wish to take into account
in any further CPO review, based on a review of the information
provided by RiverOak to DfT.
3.
On the basis of the findings from the above, PwC’s advice on
what, if any, further work TDC may wish to undertake to help strengthen
findings from any future due diligence exercise.
However, PwC is
not expected to
provide DfT with
a view on whether TDC’s
due diligence was sufficient, nor on the reasonableness or
otherwise of TDC’s conclusions.
2
At this early stage, we can report that we have: Met with DfT for an inception meeting where
we finalised scope, confirmed our work plan and
reporting;
-
Received dossiers of documents from DfT encompassing the
relevant documents from TDC and RiverOak; and Commenced our initial review of
the above documents.
Our next actions will involve:
-
Preparing a timeline of the process between, and inclusive of,
the document dates outlined above to assist our review;
-
Identifying any areas of difference in the dossiers of TDC and
RiverOak, which you have provided to us;
-
Identifying documents, such as RiverOak’s CPO indemnity offer,
financial information and other relevant decision documents that may require
specific review by subject matter experts;
-
Understanding
RiverOak’s readiness to
commit funding to
promote the CPO
process, upon signing of an
agreement with TDC; and
-
Understanding TDC’s due diligence of RiverOak’s financial
status, availability of funding to cover CPO costs and business plan.
We will remain in close contact with DfT, and we will bring to
your attention any questions in relation to documents received, including any
information gaps which may impact our work.
What it actually means is open to interpretation
I guess and will have a go later if I get time.
I guess the big revelation to come from this letter is
something along the lines of; I think most people thought that PwC would either
say that TDC had got it wrong and should pursue a cpo, or that TDC had acted
correctly and RiverOak were an unsuitable indemnity partner.
Although the PwC letter is framed in legal language it does
seem to be saying something else is what they are doing.
The political games surrounding Manston continue. The PwC report was built up to be the answer to everything. Roger Gale and John Hayes made out that it was a review of TDC's decision and implied that it was going to tell us whether Riveroak was a suitable indemnity partner. Everybody has been waiting for this report. It was delivered to the DfT over two weeks ago, but TDC hasn't been provided with a copy. No doubt the civil servants are agonising over how they will present such a meaningless load of tripe. Meanwhile, Sir Roger, who caused the report to be commissioned is doing his best to avoid talking about it, and is busy muck-stirring to try to deflect attention away from it. I just watched him on the South-East news blustering about ownership of the airport (that old chestnut). Apparently, some pro-airport supporters got hold of some old accounts for Wynyard Park. They misinterpreted the accounts because they don't understand how companies routinely borrow money and mortage assets to raise funds for future investment. They passed their wrong-headed findings to Newsroom South-East, who didn't understand them either. It was left to Cartner and Musgrave's spokesman to give the true picture, which is that their company does have some debts, of around £3 million, but that they have assets in excess of £150 million. In other words, they are running a pretty healthy and growing business.
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