Wednesday January 22 | 2020
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Businessman at the centre of LCF scandal accused of inflating company accounts By Robert Forrester A BUSINESSMAN embroiled in the £237million collapse of Tunbridge Wells investment firm London Capital & Finance [LCF] has been accused of manipulating his firm’s accounts. Elten Barker from Hadlow Down in East Sussex was co-director of London Oil & Gas [LOG] alongside Simon Hume-Kendall – the former Tunbridge Wells Conservative Party chairman who original set up LCF. LOG fell into administration last year with just £800 in its bank account shortly after the demise of LCF.
SIGN OF THE TIMES Tunbridge Wells town centre ‘is not alone’ in feeling the pinch. See page 6 for more
Call for reforms as empty units cost town millions in lost rates By Richard Williams EMPTY retail and business units are costing Tunbridge Wells millions in lost business rates, new figures show. In the borough around £1.5million is lost on average each year due to empty business properties. When businesses close down or move elsewhere, a government backed relief scheme means owners do not have to pay any rates on the empty property for three months. In Tunbridge Wells, this means around 2.3 per cent of the £56million total potential business rate income collected by the Council is lost each year. The Council only gets to keep around 4 per cent of the money it collects in the tax, although it is permitted to keep 50 per cent of any growth in business rates – currently worth an additional 1 per cent – which the authority says is ‘vital’
for them to be able to invest in assets. It is a similar picture in Tonbridge where the amount of business rates lost to empty premises is around £2.8million a year, or 4.5 per cent of the expected £60million that should be collected. But the figures from the BBC show that the two town Kent towns are faring much
‘The Government must commit to moving forward with vital reforms ’ better than many others when it comes to lost income from closed businesses. In Croydon, the Council missed out on nearly £10million last year alone, or 6 per cent of the £150million it should have collected. Nationally, around £1billion is lost to local authorities out of the £25billion
they received for providing local services, which has sparked calls for central government, who set the tax, to begin ‘vital reforms’. Richard Watts, who chairs the Local Government Association’s Resources Board, said business rates were ‘an extremely importantsource of income’ for local authorities’. “The Government must commit to moving forward with vital reforms, which include addressing business rates avoidance and the impact of reliefs, such as empty premises relief,” he said. Businesses have also called for urgent reforms with the tax blamed for a number of closures in recent years. Cllr Tom Dawlings, the Cabinet member for Finance at the Council said: “Creating a good economic climate and attracting new business is the best means of helping the local authority’s financial position.”
Injunction Under the directorship of Mr Barker and Mr Hume-Kendall, LOG was a principal borrower of LCF funds, receiving more than £129million from the bond firm before both companies collapsed. The two men were among five arrested by the Serious Fraud Office last year in connection with LCF’s failure, which resulted in more than 11,500 people losing their investments, but nobody has yet been charged and all the men deny any wrongdoing. The administration of both firms is being overseen by Smith & Williamson, but Mr Barker and Mr Hume-Kendall have both refused to be interviewed. As reported last year, Mr HumeKendall recently sought an injunction to prevent administrators from reviewing certain confidential or privileged information connected to the case, but his court action failed. Mr Barker has now attempted to get
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