North Somerset Council choice to sign lease of 45 years into "loss-making car park" slammed
The council took out a lease on Carlton Street Car Park in 2012 but it turned out to be so shoddily built that most of it has now had to be closed
Last updated 9th Nov 2025
North Somerset Council signed “the worst deal any council has ever signed” when it locked itself into leasing a loss-making car park for 45 years, the council leader has said.
The council took out a lease on Carlton Street Car Park in 2012 but it turned out to be so shoddily built that most of it has now had to be closed. Now the council is locked into paying over £500k a year to lease a car park that does not break even — it just breaks.
The Weston-super-Mare multi-storey is currently losing North Somerset Council about a quarter of a million pounds a year. Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, council leader Mike Bell (Weston-super-Mare Central, Liberal Democrat) called the situation an “absolute scandal.” He said: “We have been losing money — pretty much from day one — on the worst deal any council has ever signed.”
North Somerset Council actually owns the freehold for Carlton Street Car Park, but is leasing it back from the owners of the 200 year lease. The contract does not allow the council to change or exit the lease, but it will be able to take ownership of the car park at the end of the 45 year leaseback. That is not until 2058.
The deal makes the council responsible for all repairs to the car park. As of 2024, North Somerset Council had forked out £300k over the years on “numerous maintenance issues” at the flawed car park.
Out of order
The state of the building is now so poor that in November 2023 the upper floors of the car park were closed.
Carlton Street Car Park was not built to be strong enough to support electric vehicles and large SUVs, meaning there is a risk of overloading the upper floors if reopened at their current capacity. “Structural cracking and movement” has already been identified on the front elevation.
The lifts at the car park are also all broken — one of them beyond repair — because the slope of the car park’s upper deck means rainwater drains into the lift shafts. This creates a major health and safety risk with reopening the upper floors, as it would leave people with wheelchairs, push chairs, or buggies no choice but to use the vehicle ramps to access the upper levels.
But with the upper floors closed, only 103 of the car park’s 353 parking spaces can actually be used — significantly reducing the money the it makes.
In the last financial year, the council made a loss of £269k on the car park and it is forecast to lose £244k in 2025/26. That is more than double what the council is hoping to save in its budget cuts through closing libraries in Worle, Pill, and Winscombe.
Under the terms of the lease, the rent for Carlton Street Car Park can only go up. Even when all parking spaces were open, council officers said it had already been a “rare occurrence” for the car park to break even.
“Rushed through”
Mr Bell said that it felt like the decision to lease the car park, as part of the Dolphin Square redevelopment in 2012, had been “rushed through” by the then Conservative-run council . He said: “I remember speaking and voting against it at the time because from day one it was a really bad deal.
“The decision was made to lock us into a contract where we were paying over the odds for a car park that was never going to pay its way and, it now turns out, was not even built to the appropriate specifications.”
Now retired, former council Don Davies (formerly Pill, Independent) was the first leader of the partnership administration which took over from the Conservatives after the 2019 local elections. He said: “It’s a real scandal. … I challenged it at the time and thought it was a ridiculous deal.”
“Fatally undermined”
Mr Bell said: “When we came into the administration in 2019, … we absolutely took all legal action that we could.”
But he said: “The problem we had was the lease was terrible, so we didn’t have grounds to challenge. The construction company that built it had then gone bankrupt and no longer exists. And so, unfortunately, the legal avenues we have got available are zero.”
Speaking at a meeting of the council’s corporate, assets, transport, and environmental services scrutiny committee (CATE) which discussed the car park on Thursday November 6, Mr Bell said the attempt to take legal action had been “fatally undermined” by the terms of the lease, the liquidation of the original construction company, and the council’s failure to maintain the car park in the years after 2012 or to raise issues with the construction company before it went bankrupt.
He told the committee that the agreement had been “scandalously poor” and that none of the officers who had led the project still worked at the council.
“Would anyone expect councillors to inspect the construction?”
Nigel Ashton (Gordano Valley, Conservative), who was council leader when the council signed the deal, defended the decision. He told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “When I was leader, we took the decisions in principle to buy the whole site where the cinema and the car park are, as well as the Sovereign Centre and the Sainsbury’s site.
“Councillors take these decisions in principle but use specialist consultants for value, best funding arrangements, and future outlook for use options, as well as internal advice from our own legal, property, and construction officers. We purchased these sites for long term profits, alternative uses, and protection of important sites in Weston.
“The decisions were correct. Without this due diligence and experts/officer support, we could not proceed. Would anyone expect councillors to inspect the construction or concrete being used?”
He added: “I’m told that the construction at the time met the correct standards. I have not been involved in present discussions but, instead of keeping it partly closed, why have they not added steel beams and reopened?”
What next?
The council is currently considering what to do about the car park and has commissioned financial modelling of four different options. Mr Bell told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “The key thing now is that we are really focussed on minimising the cost to taxpayers and getting the best that we can out of this terrible mess.”
The four options are: permanently closing the upper floors and keeping it as a ground floor only car park, reopening all floors with reduced capacity and the required repairs and refurbishments, closing the car park completely, or demolishing it and building a new fully functional car park in its place. Mr Bell warned the CATE committee: “The bad news is there is no successful outcome here because it is going to be bad and costly whatever we do.”
Another, left field, option could see the council go for a Shrendenhams-style solution. In nearby Bristol, when the city’s largest department store closed down, the vacant high street premises was turned into a thriving skatepark.
Thomas Daw (Wrington, Green), who sits on the CATE committee and at 22 is North Somerset’s youngest councillor, suggested the upper floors could be used as a “community space” for sports or skateboarding as a short term option. Mr Bell said that it was something the council leadership had looked at, alongside using it to host markets and other pop up events. He said: “They are all options if we can’t use it as a car park.”