26/07/2022 - Councillors agree treatment of Marsh House rent arrears

A number of misleading statements in both MFO’s petition and the statement issued by them have been made and we wish to clarify a number of points.

MFO are a community interest company who collect rent from their sub-tenants at Marsh House and generate income from a number of operations on site and their last published accounts show them to be producing an operating surplus.  Although we are not able to go into the specific details of the commercial terms of the lease that they signed we can confirm that the agreement factored in the repair works to the building. Additional flexibility was also offered during Covid (as we did with other organisations who rent our buildings). We have also offered them the opportunity on more than one occasion to repay their rent arrears over a period of time and we are still open to working with them to find a solution for this phased approach to avoid them paying the full amount in one hit.

The organisation behind the petition are aware that council meetings are held in private when commercial activity such as lease agreements are discussed and that a community asset transfer, which they are seeking, cannot be considered when an existing tenant is in rent arrears as is the case here.

We are passionate in our aims to create a town build on fairness and we absolutely value the work of MFO, and the many other community groups and organisations who rent council-own buildings across the town. However, we must be clear that the rent that they pay is used to fund council services so we can’t just waive them or allow tenants to renege on lease agreements without good reason.