Bumbling Council Accidentally Sell School

[Fazza]

Birmingham Council accidentally sold a School in 2013 and it has only come to light since the School wanted to convert to an Academy and realised they did not own the School or the land any more as it had been accidentally sold by the council in 2013!

 

This has Humphrey Appleby's name all over it! (if you know, you know) 🤣🤣

 

https://www.localgov.co.uk/Council-takes-legal-action-to-reclaim-school-sold-in-paperwork-blunder/65050

[itskdog]

1 hour ago, Fazza said:

This has Humphrey Appleby's name all over it!

 

Tbf, the internal Civil Service AI tools are actually named "Humphrey" after Sir Humphrey himself.

 

No idea if they named it as a complement or a criticism of the product.

[Andrew_C]

How...  what even... ?

 

How in the name of all that is holy do you sell a school "accidentally" and not notice for years?

[Fazza]

11 minutes ago, Andrew_C said:

How...  what even... ?

 

How in the name of all that is holy do you sell a school "accidentally" and not notice for years?

 

By filling in the wrong form!  I believe it was the former Janitors House that was part of the School that was sold but instead of filling in form B that legally separated the house from the School, the purchasers lawyers filled in form A which covered the whole site and when they sent it to the Council for them to check and sign, they just signed it and no one noticed until the School wanted to convert to an Academy and due diligence came in to play and it was only then they realised what had happened!  Not sure how they can legally get it back so we'll see how this pans out!

[pete]

Quote

REDACTED, a business owner, initially agreed to return the school but reportedly later stopped communicating.

 

Stopped communicating?  Or gave up waiting on BCC to get their backsides in gear?  My money's on the latter. 

 

Interesting decision to libel someone when you've been squatting in their property for 13 years.  Bet someone didn't get media trained.

 

[psydii]

I wonder if this was known about at the time... I was tangentially involved in a proposed sale of what had been the premises managers house  around the same time, and "taking care to not accidentally sell the main school building by mistake" was actually discussed.

[Cazab]

I mean what does this mean for the school? The fact they've potentially been using the site for (for free?) for an extended period of time surely gives them precedent to at least continue in this way?

[Fazza]

2 hours ago, Cazab said:

I mean what does this mean for the school? The fact they've potentially been using the site for (for free?) for an extended period of time surely gives them precedent to at least continue in this way?

 

I wonder if the government may have to step in at some stage as to start with the current owner was willing to just sign it over and then they stopped communicating with the council about it!  I wonder if a 'rent' payment as a gesture of good will may need to be paid to get them to sign the land and School back over?  Maybe a compulsory purchase order for a nominal amount needs to be done.  Either way I don't think the School will be converting to an Academy for quite some time!

[LeMarchand]

Hopefully the council will stop dealing with whatever solicitor managed to let this slip. OTH, as @pete said, the council may just have not responded to queries as it got passed from office to office.

[TechMonkey]

IANAL but two trains of thought, one, that it has gone on too long that it would have to have a show of goodwill or some nominal payment to return ownership or, two, that there was no intention to sell the school, the price clearly cannot be for that amount of land and anything other than the house and the school was never up for offer, so clear case of bad paperwork so easy to unpick.  But we know how lawyers and and the law can be.

[pete]

^ One of our heads of science was offered a sizable graveyard and de-consecrated church for £1.

 

It was next door to their house, they knew the landowner and the cost of restoring the church (listed, not in the best condition) wasn't something the landowner wanted to deal with.

[NegativeKillDeath]

1 hour ago, TechMonkey said:

IANAL but two trains of thought, one, that it has gone on too long that it would have to have a show of goodwill or some nominal payment to return ownership or, two, that there was no intention to sell the school, the price clearly cannot be for that amount of land and anything other than the house and the school was never up for offer, so clear case of bad paperwork so easy to unpick.  But we know how lawyers and and the law can be.

 

This was my thought and beleive it certainly would be the case if the house was sold to a private individual but it looks like it was bought by a company that provides care services. That company could conceivably want a property and land like a primary school to build a care home. I wonder if thats why the owner has gone quiet, as you say, a lawyer may have seen an agle here. 

 

 

[psydii]

Given it was sold to a business, if the asset has not  not actually been booked on their accounts for 12 years, it does  support a case that there was no intention by either party to transfer ownership of the school grounds. Particularly if there is any sort of paper trail where the business recently acknowledged the issue and offered to transfer it back.  

 

 

[Fazza]

Sounds like an expensive mess to me as lawyers aint cheap!

[machy]

I do wonder if the cheaper and quicker option would be to just buy it back off the current 'owner'.

 

Whilst there's certainly methods they could 'take' it back, I'd have to imagine a long legal battle would end up costing a lot more

 

and knowing councils i do wonder if they were expecting the 'owner' to be paying for the legal fees (or vague threats) and that's why they stopped responding 

[NegativeKillDeath]

3 minutes ago, machy said:

I do wonder if the cheaper and quicker option would be to just buy it back off the current 'owner'.

 

Whilst there's certainly methods they could 'take' it back, I'd have to imagine a long legal battle would end up costing a lot more

 

and knowing councils i do wonder if they were expecting the 'owner' to be paying for the legal fees (or vague threats) and that's why they stopped responding 

 

I suspect that as it was technically owned by a business there would be some tax liabilities that prevent just buying it back. In fact thats probably true if a private individual as well.