The deadline to get ‘expressions of interest’ in for the sale of the Ventnor Botanic Garden is drawing closer.
Those interested have until noon on 11th November (Friday next week) to express their interest.
Keen to find out how popular the disposal of this council asset has been, we asked the council how many expressions of interest they’d received.
Unable to give numbers
We were simply after the number of people who had been in touch, not any names or commercially sensitive information, so were surprised to receive the following response.
We are happy to confirm that we are encouraged by the number of organisations expressing an interest in VBG. The closing date for bids is November 11 and there will then be a period of time for evaluating submissions before a final decision is made. We are unable to give more details in advance of November 11.
Change in precedent?
This doesn’t really tally with the action taken earlier in the year over the sale of the Ventnor Winter Gardens.
Senior council officer, John Metcalfe, was quite happy to reveal at a public meeting on 19th January that the council had already received five expressions of interest and this was well before the deadline of 22nd March.
Two weeks ago, we asked the council why they had changed policy on this. After yet another lack of response (these are becoming very tiresome) we sent a reminder this morning.
A reply came back stating that they would not be expanding on their original statement and that there are “good reasons for not wanting to specify the numbers at this point.”
Intriguing eh!
Update at 12.42pm
Just under 30 minutes after publishing this article, we received an unprompted email from the head of press at the council stating,
If you are interested, John’s comments were made before the tendering process began and referred to unsolicited contact received following the announcement of the Winter Garden closure. In other words, an entirely different set of circumstances.
Quite why he chose not to say this two weeks ago when first asked (or when prompted earlier today) but instead chose to take the line of ‘no further comment’ is beyond us.
Intriguing eh!
