Dispute with Bolton Council – An Update! 18th August 2025
We have previously told you about the Council not renewing the partnership agreement with our charity (Banana Enterprise Network), which expired on 31 March 2025. The Council have completely excluded us from our Rock Hall project. We have made various attempts to get information from the Council about their decision but without success. We remain in dispute with the Council and the matter is not resolved.
For those who have followed our Charity’s journey since 2020, to save and acquire Rock Hall for the community, you will know that our small charity has worked extremely hard to get it to the funded stage, so that repairs to the hall could take place (which was the first phase of the work we planned to do at the Hall). Our charity obtained £295,000 grant from the Community Ownership Fund (COF). The National Lottery Heritage Fund provided £466,000 as a result of our 2023 joint bid for funds with the Council. Without our hard work and the COF money which we raised, the recent partial renovation would not have taken place and our joint £4 million funding bid to the Lottery in 2023 would not have been a success.
The council had Rock Hall up for lease since around 2018 after closing it in 2014. They were going to either sell it or demolish it before they agreed (after seeing our plans) that they would transfer the Hall to our Charity via a Community Asset Transfer (CAT). They have not completed the CAT transfer.
The Council had no vision for the Hall and the park but we had a vision, architectural plans (which were finalised with the council in November 2024) and a Business Plan from the outset!
Since the councils decision to take over our project, we have done the following:-
1. The charity issued an official complaint to the Council on 20th February. We sent a “complaint appeal” on 7th March and have had no final response from the Council. This Appeal was sent to the Chief Executive Sue Johnson and the Complaints team. The Councils own Complaints policy states that we should have had a response within 20 working days. We have had no response.
The Council’s complaints policy also states: “if the complaint is complex and takes longer to investigate we will keep you informed. We will also tell you who to contact if your issue is not resolved”. We have not been kept informed, and we have had no response.
2. Our dispute with the Council was referred to the Local Government Ombudsman on 20th May 2025. The Ombudsman has pursued the matter with the Council but they were told by the Council that they need more time. The Council have still failed to provide a final response to either our Charity or the Ombudsman.
3. We have issued three FOI’s (Freedom of Information Requests), for various information as part of our dispute. The Council claim that the information is exempt from disclosure under the FOI act in two cases as it would involve in a breach of confidence, and in one case is exempt due to other regulations.
4. A Solicitor’s letter was sent to the Council on 11th July about our dispute. The Council replied saying they needed more time and eventually on 19th August a response was received by our solicitor who will be replying to the council. It is clear from their letter that they dont wish to settle our dispute so we will be taking the matter further and to court if necessary.
5. We asked local councillors if they would listen to our side of the story. We have had no response.
Naturally there is much more we could say but for legal reasons we have limited the update to the bare facts of our attempts to resolve matters with the Council where we have currently made no progress at all. If this lack of engagement (to help resolve the issues we have raised), continues by Bolton Council, then the matter will be taken further.
We have kept the National Lottery Heritage Fund updated about these issues as the council are applying for more money currently.
In the meantime, we wish to thank everyone who has contacted us offering their support and who have provided us with heartfelt messages after seeing how Bolton Council have treated our Charity.
