AT the full council meeting on February 6, the Deane House (DH) refurbishment project was approved.

It was agreed to spend £7.5m on a building that has a market value of £2.25m as confirmed by senior asset manager.

Furthermore the administration had already spent in 2013 almost £0.25m for plans with consultants DTZ to compile a report on various options on its future to be considered including relocation to the SCC.

The Deane House refurbishment option came out at the cost of £8.3m with the highest annual running costs of £162k as the least viable option.

Why spent almost quarter of a million pounds on consultants and not even refer to their recommendations?

DTZ concludes that; whilst remaining at the DH meets the asset retention principle, the building is out-dated with low value.

At the Corporate Scrutiny meeting on 16 August 2012 it was recommended that; “In view of the cost and longevity of the payback period, and the conclusion derived from the Feasibility study that no work is undertaken on the refurbishment” to move the police in the DH, that was with the payback of over 10 not 45 years, as the current proposal.

As one councillor stated at last nights Full Council meeting “his unborn grand children will have to carry on paying for it!”

What happens if the tenants decide to terminate their contract after 10 years?

What is the future of local government? Will it be a commissioning body or a unitary?

Why can we not let part of the buildings to the police and other interested parties as is and get them to do their own refurbishments? Or think of other viable and more affordable options such as Firepool.

A building on Firepool would cost about £4.4m including purchase of long lease, fit out costs etc, it would be “fit for purpose” and in terms of cost per square metre it would be far less than trying to refurbish an old environmentally unsound and unwieldy Deane House.

The new environmentally efficient building could include a purpose build area for the Taunton Police as well, with lowest running costs (£114K/yr).

The total costs of borrowing and capital on the DH will be around £16M.

No commercial landlord would spend almost 4X as much as his or her building value on refurbishment to attract a tenant no matter what.

Indeed if this is such a fantastic proposition why not raise the capital on the DH? Why borrow against other capitals? How does it make sense for the public purse?

This is a convenient easy fix; at the time that, we are being told that we need to be more commercial!

Yet money is not available for vital projects such as an attenuation pond to protect Comeytrowe and Manor, infrastructure, permanent flood defences, to protect Taunton North and the town centre when Firepool is developed.

The only conclusion that can be drawn is that; this latest proposal is yet another case of throwing good money after bad. TDBC taxpayers will be worse off than ever!

Commercially it does not stack up. This is commercial suicide, which will ultimately lead to bankruptcy and unprecedented increase in our council tax.

Conservatives have failed to adopt a commercial approach to the proposal and they are again in danger of not creating value for the taxpayers.

This is yet another symptom of poor asset management that has beset the TDBC administration with its appalling record of losing nearly £1m per annum on the return it gets on its £65m worth of property assets it has in its possession.

The Conservative led council needs to think again. Unviable projects will ultimately fail as will the merger with the failing West Somerset Council.

Add to this the huge multi million pound bills on the pension deficit that has never been factored in to the imaginary savings of the business and transformation plan and you see the extent of the damage!

Cllr Habib Farbahi Comeytrowe ward.