Councillors told to write off £61,000 of failed fire brigade company debt

Plus: The inside story of Ben Houchen being ignored by Wes Streeting

Today’s is edition number 63 of The Teesside Lead.

This week councillors were told to forgive and forget £61,000 of unpaid loans to a company they owned which has been liquidated, leaving HMRC with outstanding debts of over £1m.

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I’ve also acquired the 13 unanswered emails Ben Houchen sent to Wes Streeting over the course of the last year. That’s available for paid subs to read. It’s only £4.99 a month or £49 a year if you have the means (and inclination) to chip in financially.

Today’s edition couldn’t be possible without the help of readers sending tip-offs. Thank you for your trust. I feel like there’s more to come on this.

If you have a story, get in touch! Email me via teesside@thelead.uk. You can also find me on Bluesky.

I’ll be back next Sunday.

Leigh

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CFB Risk Management (Image: CFB Risk Management Services CIC).

Councillors who make up Cleveland Fire Authority have been told to write off £71,000 of debt owed to it by a company it owns, which is to be liquidated after racking up over £1.2m in unpaid tax bills.

Cleveland Fire Brigade Risk Management Services CIC was a community interest company set up to undertake commercial operations in 2011, and was owned by the Cleveland Fire Authority. Cleveland Fire Authority is the statutory body, made up of local councillors, which oversees the operation of Cleveland Fire Brigade.

I’ve previously reported how the CIC was taken to the High Court by HMRC after it stopped repaying an enormous tax bill. The taxman had petitioned the court for the company to be wound up. The decision has now been taken to liquidate the company before the next scheduled court hearing.

The meeting’s papers say HMRC deferred the company’s payments of income tax, national insurance and VAT.

An extraordinary meeting of the Cleveland Fire Authority took place on Friday, in which councillors were recommended to write off £71,000 it was owed by the company on the grounds that it was highly unlikely to get it back.

The majority of this money comes from funds the authority lent to the CIC to invest in a company called Command Solutions Ltd in 2017. This £150,000 was to buy 50% of the company, which was set up to develop a “command support system”, which could be sold to other fire brigades for profit.

According to the meeting’s agenda: “progress in developing and then selling a command support system was much slower than initially anticipated.”

As a result, the £150,000 loan, plus interest, was not repaid to the Fire Authority on schedule, leaving nearly half of the loan - £66,060.21 - currently outstanding after eight years. Command Solutions were contacted and asked what will happen to them now that one of its owners is being liquidated but did not respond.

The software it developed is now available to use for £25,000 a year.

In February a new company was formed, CFB Risk Management Group Limited. The meeting’s papers say this limited company was set up to take contracts from customers who weren’t able to award them to CICs. This new company will be struck off as part of the liquidation process.

Cleveland Fire Brigade’s press team responded to a request for comment with confirmation of the Fire Authority’s extraordinary meeting and its agenda.

The CIC’s closure will see the loss of around 38 jobs. Its latest accounts, which cover the year to March 2024, show outstanding creditors were owed £1.2m, though it’s probably safe to say its financial position by now is potentially much worse.

These debts are now likely to be largely written off by liquidators.

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FOI reveals detail of Ben Houchen’s 13 unanswered emails to Wes Streeting

It’s only been a month since Ben Houchen made the claim that he’s written to Health Secretary Wes Streeting 13 times over the course of the last year to try and arrange a meeting, only to be completely ignored until recently - when the offer to meet a junior minister was made as a consolation prize.

I asked if I could see the letters that were sent, and the responses they did (or rather, didn’t) receive, but was ignored myself. But thanks to an FOI I’ve now seen first hand how awful this whole saga is.