A few points about this story are worth mentioning separately from the court proceedings.

I want to talk about transparency & accountability in local government (don't switch off, it's important - honest) https://twitter.com/Gareth_Davies09/status/1317362037773709314

About a year ago, while looking through an obscure government dataset (these are the best) about local authority investments and borrowing, one figure caught my eye.

Thurrock Council, in Essex, had £1 billion in debt relating to loans from other LAs (45 times national average)

The spreadsheet also included another column which showed the council had hundreds of millions invested in so-called "externally managed funds".

But they were just numbers. There was no indication of which councils Thurrock had borrowed from or what they had invested in

So I looked at Thurrock's accounts. It showed the level of debt but nothing to indicate that the money had been borrowed from other councils. The investments were limited to a single line stating £702m of "long term capital investment in the renewable energy sector"

A quick google revealed next to nothing publicly the investments, and even less about the borrowing. That seemed odd, right? A council borrowing and investing huge sums of public cash shouldn't be something that's hard to find information on

So I read every report and meeting minutes published by the council since 2015 (I know, I really need a hobby). And again I found very little other than in 2016 when there was a flurry of info on a deal to invest in a solar park in Swindon with a company called Rockfire Capital

But even that public announcement was accompanied by complaints from councillors that they were only learning of the multimillion deal three months after it had been secretly signed off by a council officer

From 2017 onwards the council stopped saying anything publicly about specific investments, even though they were ploughing huge sums of money into them behind the scenes.

By March 2020, Thurrock had £815m in the renewable energy sector yet had said virtually nothing about it

So I had to look for other sources of information. I combined dozens of payments to suppliers datasets (published under transparency rules) and found £74m in payments to Rockfire by mid-2017 (far more than had been publicised by the council)

I also found loan and interest payments to 150 local authorities across the UK - including police and fire authorities as well as councils. All of them had helped finance Thurrock's massive investment policy

So I contacted the council and, surprisingly, they put finance director Sean Clark up for interview. I think he thought it was an opportunity to talk about their great investment strategy. He was wrong.

Clark oversees all the borrowing and the investments, all of which are undertaken with little to no public or democratic scrutiny. He told me he never goes out looking for deals but that "intermediaries" come to him with money-making opportunities

Turns out that was well as being able to borrow £1 billion and invest where he sees fit, Clark is also responsible for deciding whether to disclose details about what he is doing under the Freedom of Information Act.

I had asked Thurrock's press office for details of which councils it had borrowed from and what the council had invested in. They did not respond. During the interview Clark told me that if I submitted an FOI he would reject it

So I did and he did.

Some of the councils that loaned Thurrock money were more forthcoming. In fact of the 40 top council lenders and borrowers, Thurrock was one of only two that refused the FOI

So what about the council's that had fuelled Thurrock's investments?

Turns out when councils lend to each other (through intermediaries) they don't ask what the money is for.

Councils that had loaned Thurrock tens of millions told me they had no concerns about what it was being used for because they always got their cash back.

How? Because Thurrock borrows from other local authorities to pay them back

We have launched a legal challenge relating to Thurrock’s FOI rejection, but more on that next week.

For now that left us with about £700m of publicly-funded investments unaccounted for.

It was around this time that we published our first story.

Through a jigsaw process we felt confident in saying Thurrock had £420m invested in bonds issued by one company, Rockfire Capital.

The council did not respond to that figure https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2020-05-22/thurrock-council-borrowed-1bn-from-taxpayers-to-bet-on-british-sunshine

In fact we had to wait until this week for Liam Kavanagh, the owner of Rockfire, to confirm in court that his businesses had received £145m from Thurrock as part of a refinancing of 19 solar farms, *a deal the council has never publicised anything about*

But it’s not just the public and the press being kept in the dark.

The council’s rules state that officers must provide all group leaders with an overview of every investment over £10m *before* the deal is done.

Opposition leaders told me that never once received such briefings

So, to recap:

Thurrock official borrows £1bn from 150+ local authorities. He invests most of the money.

Next to nothing said publicly. Next to no scrutiny. FOIs refused.

£100m more emerges. Tory cllrs say ‘we should borrow and invest even more’ https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2020-07-10/thurrock-mystery-continues-as-council-wont-say-where-more-than-100m-has-gone

On three occasions in last 18 days I have put the issues that have emerged in the recent court proceedings to Thurrock council.

I received no response.

I repeatedly called the press office.

The once time they picked up, the phone was quickly put down

As I said yesterday, I’m lucky it’s my job to do this full-time. I’ve been met with barriers at every stage in trying to scrutinise how £1bn of public money has been borrowed and spent. A year on we still only have a fraction of the picture.

What chance do the public have?