Sir – Further to last week’s letter from Alan Perrow, chairman of Craven Ratepayers Action Group, I can shed some more light on the grotesquely expensive Belle Vue Mills affair.

Mr Perrow rightly criticises what he sardonically calls “Craven District Council’s jewel in the crown”, Belle Vue Mills, citing this unfit-for-purpose building’s 999 year lease, lack of parking, “and annually increasing management charges”.

Herald readers will rightly wrack their brains as to why a public body responsible for the expenditure of their taxes chose to abandon its perfectly serviceable former HQ at Granville Street?

The reason given by CDC was that the building was no longer serviceable and structurally unsound. This was not true.

Although somewhat dilapidated, if certain works were carried out the building had at least three more decades of serviceable life, according to two reports over an interval of several years commissioned by CDC from F R Varley Associates, a highly respected local firm of consulting engineers.

Both reports (obtained under the Freedom of Information Act) address the structural condition of CDC’s former offices at Granville Street, the first submitted in 1999 and the second (by the same firm) in October 2008.

The first report concludes that a number of non-structural flaws (such as cracks in walls and beams and water penetration) required remedial attention and regular maintenance thereafter.

Nine years later, the second report noted that the cracks “have been strapped in accordance with our recommendations and no further movement has occurred ... therefore no remedial works are necessary at this time”.

It also observed that some of the repairs recommended in the earlier report – specifically some corroded joints in the building's steel columns – had not been carried out.

To a suspicious mind this might suggest that CDC wanted the building to deteriorate!

It is also curious, given that there was no shortage of existing office buildings in and around Skipton, that CDC’s leaders plumped so enthusiastically for the most expensive and least convenient option?

As to why they did so, readers will form their own conclusion from a leaked email dated October 25, 2009, on the topic of Belle Vue Mills.

The email, from council leader Knowles-Fitton to CDC’s [then] chief financial officer Susan Goodhall is now in the public domain at http://cravenconfidential.wordpress.com/ view-emails-2/).

Its penultimate paragraph reads: “You, more than anyone, is convinced that in the not too distant future, they’ll [Belle Vue Mills] make someone a good profit – why not us?”

Herald readers will form their own conclusions as to the meaning of Coun Knowles-Fitton’s words.

Peter Scott-Smith, Long Preston