An assurance has been given that the controversial Bull and Monkie site in Spalding will not escalate into anything like the infamous Hacienda situation which developed in Gosberton ten years ago.
South Holland District Council tidied up the Bull and Monkie site recently after a notice ordering owner Crispen Holdings Ltd to do so was apparently ignored.
Council leader Gary Porter arranged for contractors to clean up the Churchgate site and secure it. Work to remove unsightly graffiti was carried out on Tuesday.
He says the council is determined to recover “the cost plus interest” in due course.
At last Wednesday’s full council meeting, leader of the opposition, Coun Angela Newton, quizzed Coun Porter about the situation, after praising the operation.
She said: “I’d like to congratulate all the people concerned for getting the Bull and Monkie site tidied up. I’m sure we’re all really pleased to see it happening.”
However, she feared that the council could end up with a situation on its hands like the one gangmaster Alan Garrard created in Gosberton in 2004.
Despite not having planning permission, he developed a two-up, two-down building into huge accommodation for migrant workers. It was known as the Hacienda and, over a number of months, an increasingly tense stand-off emerged, ultimately ending in police storming the High Street site in February 2005, followed by demolition workers.
Coun Newton said: “I’m not sure if this is going to meet the same fate at the end of the day.”
Coun Porter, who was also leader of the council at the time of the row, assured her that the Spalding situation was “a different set of rules” to the Hacienda site.
He said: “That was by some undesirable businessman who thought he could exploit vulnerable people and ignored the planning system which operates in this country.
“He kept on building extension after extension including a swimming pool, bizarrely, and then occupied it with migrant workers living in atrocious conditions.”
The £116,000 demolition and legal costs were recovered through a court granting ownership of the site to the council, and it subsequently being sold.
The recent purge on eyesores around the district is part of the council’s Pride In South Holland campaign.
Coun Porter told the meeting he hoped the Bull and Monkie work would demonstrate to other eyesore site owners that it would be better – and cheaper – for them to act rather than the council being forced to.
