In a significant twist to the Millwall FC land-grab debacle, the Guardian has learned the foundation at the heart of the scheme was told in 2014 to stop making the false funding claims that have helped puncture the project – but still carried on claiming to have a £2m “pledge” until January this year.
The Surrey Canal Sports Foundation is fronted by the elected Labour mayor of Lewisham, Sir Steve Bullock, and backed by the offshore-registered developer Renewal, with whom it shares a registered office. The foundation was a key cog in justifying the seizure of Millwall’s land and gaining planning permission for the £1bn regeneration scheme, which has been thrown into confusion by the cancellation of the Millwall compulsory purchase order (CPO) last month.
For the past seven years the claim of Sport England funding provided the company with a rubber stamp of authenticity in its bid to raise £40m to build a “sporting village” as part of the CPO-based scheme. Sport England funding is widely recognised as a means of unlocking other funding streams and attracting backers.
Tanni Grey-Thompson and the leader of Southwark council, Peter John, have resigned from the foundation’s board in the past two weeks following revelations in the Guardian that there is no funding agreement with Sport England.
Until now the mayor and the Renewal-backed foundation have maintained the funding claim was based on Sport England correspondence from October 2013 that they believed suggested a £2m “pledge” was in place. The Guardian can reveal Sport England wrote to the foundation in September 2014 specifically asking it to stop claiming to have £2m promised and to remove mentions of Sport England from its publicity.
In spite of this, the claim of £2m Sport England funding appeared six months later in the Surrey Canal Sports Foundation’s annual accounts, a key document for potential funders and partners, for which mayor Bullock is jointly responsible as a trustee. Even more astonishingly, the £2m was included as an “in-principle pledge” to the Renewal-backed foundation in the council’s Millwall CPO documents in February 2016, a document signed off by Lewisham’s head of planning and head of law. Right up until January the £2m funding claim was still splashed across the foundation’s website.
Asked about the September 2014 Sport England letter asking the foundation to desist from making the funding claims, Jordana Malik of Renewal gave no comment. Renewal’s public relations agency offered the following statement: “Renewal fundamentally disagrees with the Guardian suggestions that either Renewal or the Surrey Canal Sports Foundation has misled anyone in respect of the status of the £2m funding allocation from Sport England, nor the general commitment and support that Sport England has expressed for the scheme. Renewal has at all times acted in good faith and is fully committed to ensuring that [the sporting village] Energize is delivered.”
In a statement, Sport England told the Guardian: “In 2010 we received a funding application from the Surrey Canal Sports Foundation but this was withdrawn in 2013. We therefore have no funding agreement, of any kind, in place with them.”
Further investigation has raised other areas of confusion around partnerships claimed by the Renewal-backed foundation. In its most recent accounts, the Surrey Canal Sports Foundation states: “During the last three years the foundation has received pledges from Renewal, Lewisham council, Onside and Sport England that total £18.5m.” This sum takes in the non-existent £2m from Sport England. It also includes £500,000 promised by the council and a £10m “capital pledge” from Renewal itself, in practice the estimated value of a lease granted on the warehouse currently housing the foundation’s basketball and table tennis activities.
The remaining £6m appears to be from Onside Youth Zones, a highly regarded young person’s charity mentioned repeatedly in the Surrey Canal Sports Foundation’s publicity and picked out as a specific £6m “pledge” in its 2014-15 accounts. In practice Onside’s funding method, as described on its own website, would require Lewisham taxpayers to provide £3m of this presumed £6m and then to contribute £400,000 per year in running costs. There is no evidence in council documents that it has agreed to or been made aware of this hypothetical commitment.
On the New Bermondsey website, Onside is the first organisation listed as “committed to” the scheme, with a large graphic representation of what the Youth Zone would look like. The website’s timeline of major events sees the year 2014 given over to “Partnership with Onside Youth Zones announced at the House of Lords to deliver London’s first Youth Zone”.
Onside, which recently opened two other Youth Zones elsewhere in London, told the Guardian: “We do not have a formal agreement with Surrey Canal Sports Foundation or Renewal regarding the development. In 2014 we explored the possibility of creating a new Youth Zone should their plans for a community sports facility progress. We only commit funds to build a new Youth Zone when all of the appropriate financial and planning elements are in place and the local authority has confirmed its support. As with all long-term potential developments, we would fully evaluate a final scheme before entering into any formal agreements.”
Another highly-regarded grassroots charity, Greenhouse Sports, is also mentioned as a potential funder and is given its own headed section in the Surrey Canal Sport Foundation’s company accounts. “Greenhouse Sports … involvement would bring the pledges for Energize up to the region of £23.5m,” the council’s own CPO papers state. A spokeswoman for Greenhouse Sports told the Guardian it has no formal relationship of any kind with the Surrey Canal Sports Foundation.
Asked about these relationships Jordana Malik, a co-director of the foundation with mayor Bullock, offered no comment. Bullock has stated that he will not be resigning as mayor of Lewisham. Asked if he would be resigning from the Surrey Canal Sports Foundation, he told the Guardian: “I have asked the foundation to provide me with information regarding communications from Sport England and once I have this I will review my position.”
Asked if he had had sight of the information in the foundation’s 2014-15 company accounts before they were filed, Bullock added: “I need to establish the timelines of meetings of the SCSF and the publication of its accounts in order to answer that question.” At the time of writing Bullock remains both the mayor of Lewisham and a director of the Surrey Canal Sports Foundation.