Councillor Ian Auckland, Liberal Democrat councillor for the Graves Park ward, spoke exclusively to Sheff.eu on the announcement that Sheffield City Council had sold Cobnar Cottage in Graves Park to a private owner:
What are your thoughts on today’s news that Cobnar Cottage has been sold by the council?
I think it’s a sad and tragic day. As far as I’m concerned, having campaigned on this issue since 1998, when previous attempts were made to sell on charitable land on Graves Park, there is no difference between a blade of grass in the grounds of Cobnar cottage and a blade of grass outside the Rose Garden café. It’s all absolutely the same land.
What would you say to the accusations by a Labour councillor that you were responsible for similar sales of park land when you were on the cabinet?
The council does not own Graves Park. There are some other parks that are held in charitable trusts. The council must act in accordance with the trusts, not in accordance with what suits Sheffield City Council at that time as a corporate body. As it happens, I can give you fifteen reasons why the land at Woodhouse Mill bears zero relationship, zero relationship to land held in charitable trust at Graves Park. And the land at Mosborough, for that matter. The point to remember is the council has a responsibility to look after Graves Park upon trust in a charity. It can make popular or unpopular decisions with land that it owns – not charitable land. Why don’t they get one of J.G. Graves’ paintings off the wall and flog that next?
Who do you think was responsible for the cottage’s state of disrepair?
I’ve been in the cabinet, I’ve sat round the table – and I didn’t know Cobnar Cottage was empty. It wasn’t boarded up, it wasn’t looked after properly, and nobody turned the water off. Some of that time I was round the cabinet table. I have concluded now, living locally, that the charity isn’t like any other charity I know. It isn’t treated separately. It’s taken as part of the decision making of a political body, the council’s cabinet, it’s taken as part of the same agenda where they might be investing money in council housing, or demolishing council housing, and where they are wondering how on earth to fill a £15m spending gap in social services. The list is endless. All the decisions are taken around the cabinet table. There is no way that local trustees would have let this cottage go. There’s no way local trustees would have engaged a letting agent, in this case Sheffield Homes, who then spend 5 years – 5 years! – not letting it, and then effectively telling the trustees that they can’t find a tenant for a two bedroom cottage in Graves Park. Don’t you find that ridiculous? Because I do. Also, might they have noticed that no-one had turned the water off, which flooded the cottage and allowed it to go to wreck and ruin? Someone might have noticed water had flooded the basement in a day or two, instead of spending three months not noticing anything was wrong until water started pouring out the front door.
So will you be pushing for a restructuring of the way the park is managed?
If you check back on the council record you will see I proposed a notice of motion quite some months ago to look at this, and I’ve spoken with the council’s legal officer pointing out that this isn’t like any charity I have ever known and that this needs changing. And I hope it will. It’s important to say, here, that as a ward councillor I try and listen to what my constituents tell me, and I try and stay close to the Friends of Graves Park group. But they are a separate body and a separate body in their own right. Charities aren’t supposed to get into political battles, and they do not. So my job is to try and use council processes, council procedures to represent their concerns to the council. Almost, in a way, irrespective of who’s running it. And that’s what I intend to do.
benedict tetzlaff - deas. 