An area of land next to the busy Dawsons Corner roundabout has been bought by Leeds City Council to allow an £18.8m congestion-busting scheme to progress.
Seven acres of grazing land at the junction of Stanningley Bypass and Bradford Road has been bought from The Calverley Charity at a cost of £1.4m, senior councillors have decided.
The charity has Leeds City Council as its sole trustee – with Councillor Andrew Carter (Cons, Calverley & Farsley) named as the trustee. The Calverley Charity provides small grants to individuals or voluntary organisations to relieve poverty within the parish of Calverley.
A council report says the £1.4m value of the land has been set by an independent registered valuer.
Two other – smaller – pieces of land held by other landowners at the north east and north west of the junction will also be bought on a temporary or permanent basis by the council, with negotiations due to start on securing a third piece of land (see map below for sites).
A council report added:
“The improvements aim to reduce delays and enable the junction to operate more efficiently leading to better environment in terms of air quality and enhance the key objective of all road user safety.
“If the third party land is not purchased the junction improvements will not be feasible. This has been managed through early engagement and regular communication with the various land owners.”
LCC has secured £14.48m towards the overall Dawsons Corner scheme and is applying for more funding from other sources.
A meeting of the Outer West Community Committee earlier this month agreed to appoint Councillors Andrew and Amanda Carter (both Cons, Calverley & Farsley) and Cllr Peter Carlill (Lab, Calverley & Farsley) onto The Calverley Charity.
The reports and full executive board agenda can be found here.
WLD reported in May that plans for a mobile phone mast at the junction of Stanningley Bypass and Bradford Road were rejected by Leeds City Council as the authority wanted to use the land for the Dawsons Corner scheme.
Quick questions ,does all the money go to the charity,and do the trustees or anyone involved in the charity receive any financial remuneration if so what are the figures involved?
More importantly, does anyone know what this Charity actually does? 5 years of financial history records from the link in the article show that they spend only a couple of hundred quid a year, so it’s not clear to me whether they actually do dispense ‘small grants to relieve poverty’ at all (that spend could easily be annual accountancy costs). Does anyone know why one of our Councillors is head of a charity that appears to be barely active, but is somehow sitting on £1.4m of land that the council need to now purchase?