Conservative councillor Dominic Muns has revealed he has been threatened with a lawsuit after voicing concerns over the Lib Dem's plans to spend £2.5 million disposing of the St. Stephen's Place car park in Trowbridge.
Read the statement from Cllr Muns:
It’s been an “interesting” few months for me as a Wiltshire Councillor.
At yesterday’s Extraordinary Full Council meeting in Trowbridge, Wiltshire Conservatives took a clear and responsible stand by voting down a deeply flawed proposal from the Liberal Democrat administration to hand over St Stephen’s Place Car Park and £2.5 million of public money, with no credible plan and no meaningful guarantees.
We oppose the idea that the answer to complex town centre regeneration challenges is simply to hand a property developer £2.5million and a free multi-storey car park so that they can extract profit for themselves.
Throughout months of scrutiny, Conservative councillors, led by me, have repeatedly asked reasonable questions. Where is the detailed business plan? What are the projected revenue impacts for the council? What legal and commercial safeguards are in place if redevelopment stalls or fails to materialise? Time and again, these questions (and many more) went unanswered.
Instead of transparency, councillors were stonewalled. Instead of reassurance, we were asked to take the deal on trust. For me personally, the situation took a much darker turn when I was threatened with a lawsuit.
As Richard Clewer, Leader of the Conservative Group, rightly put it, this was “a terrible deal for Wiltshire residents”. Public money must be spent with care, evidence, and accountability. £2.5million is not loose change; it is residents’ hard-earned money that could otherwise be supporting frontline services, highways, or genuinely viable regeneration projects.
The Liberal Democrats frequently talk about being “open” and “fair”. Yet when it mattered most, openness was absent. Fairness to taxpayers was ignored. Scrutiny was treated as an inconvenience rather than a safeguard.
You can watch my 3-minute speech to Council here.
I am genuinely sorry that many residents will find that their Liberal Democrat or Independent elected representative, who should be supporting their interests and protecting their money, voted instead to support this shoddy deal and line the pockets of a developer.
