UPDATE on our dispute with Bolton Council (after they took over our Rock Hall project in January 2025).
Thank you for continuing to follow our page and support us as we continue our dispute with Bolton Council regarding our Rock Hall project.
We finally received a reply from Bolton Council in mid-December 2025 to our Complaint Appeal letter, which we had sent to the Council’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in early March 2025 . The Council apologised for the delay (over 9 months delay!). We noticed this article recently about the council :- https://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/…/25686519.bolton…/
We have been examining the Council’s reply to us which was not sent from the Council’s CEO but was from the Department of Corporate Services. Importantly, it still does not deal with what processes or procedures were followed at the Council when they made their decision to exclude us from the project in early January 2025. This and other matters are being taken up with the Local Government Ombudsman.
In a previous post on our Facebook page Saved Rock Hall one of our supporters mentioned about the government codes of conduct which apply to all public servants. If you are not familiar with them, please do a search for “the 7 principles of public life” on the Gov.uk website for more info. The 7 principles are selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty, leadership.
Do you think Bolton Council have exhibited these principles? Here is a reminder of the recent history of our Rock Hall project.
Bolton Council closed Rock Hall in 2014 and it remained empty and at the mercy of vandals and decay. They had no vision or passion or the commitment to save it and turn it into a viable community focussed building!
Our charity Banana Enterprise Network stepped in and started to work very hard from January 2020 to save Rock Hall. We planned to acquire it on behalf of the community and turn it into a viable community focussed building. It became our sole project due to the huge amount of time and expense needed to progress the project.
We extensively engaged with the community. We set up steering groups. We applied for funding to deliver events and activities in Moses gate country park which were attended by hundreds of people over the years. This helped us with our project market research and we built the trust and immense support from the community.
We spent many hours producing vital documents needed by potential funders, such as project feasibility plans, business plans and our charity successfully applied for over £400,000 of funding ourselves between 2020 and 2023/2024 for our Rock Hall project.
When our first £4million bid to The National Lottery Heritage Fund for our Rock Hall project failed in 2022, they said it was because they needed more clarity on the support offered to us by Bolton Council. They encouraged us to reapply and said that we had done very well so far and that they wanted to fund our charity for our Rock Hall project. However, they needed Bolton Council to support us by cash-flowing the project.
The National Lottery Heritage Fund said they couldn’t give us funding upfront and we needed many thousands of pounds to pay builders, activity providers etc as part of the initial restoration work. Although our charity had successfully bid for £295,000 to the governments COF (community ownership fund) in 2022, it wasn’t enough to cash flow the first phase of our £4million project.
Bolton Council refused to cash flow our project unless they were made the “lead applicant” (main applicant) on our charity’s 2nd funding bid application to the Heritage Lottery Fund in 2023 (which we agreed to). Our re-application to the Heritage Fund was mainly written by our team with some support from the council and included various key documents that our charity had produced. It included letters of support for our charity which we obtained for the project, including one from a well known celebrity too!
When the council told us they wouldn’t cash flow the project unless they became lead applicant, our Trustees met to discuss this as we all felt uncomfortable with the councils request. Our Trustees and staff met with a Council Officer to discuss it and we were assured that they would not take over our project! We reluctantly agreed to let the council be lead partner! We trusted them!
Once we had successfully bid for the Heritage Lottery funding (2023) and began to use the funding our charity had secured for activities and initial renovation/repair work at the Hall in 2024, thats exactly what the Council did (ie. They took over our project) in January 2025. This was despite the fact that we had been successfully delivering the funded project as detailed in an independent project “Interim Report” commissioned for the National Lottery Heritage Fund in October 2024.
Have Bolton Council complied with the 7 principles of public life do you think, on the way they have dealt with our charity on the project and the subsequent complaint appeal?
There is much more to tell you and we will be giving you a lot more information shortly about the events that took place leading to our exclusion from the project as we feel it’s time to give our side of the story. We’ve been waiting a year for the council to settle our dispute and little progress has been made, so please continue to watch this space!
