Council paid failing Glastonbury regen scheme £420k during funding ‘pause’
Audit confirms Somerset Council paid £420k to Glastonbury project months after announcing a funding pause
Somerset Council paid £420,000 towards a failing regeneration project in Glastonbury mere months after telling the public the project had been ‘paused’.
The Red Brick Building, located on Morland Road in Glastonbury, has been the subject of significant building work as part of the £23.6m Glastonbury town deal, with the derelict ‘Building C’ being transformed into community events space, offices, and other facilities.
Somerset Council officially ‘paused’ funding for the Life Factory project in January 2024 amid serious concerns being raised about its management, with the South West Audit Partnership (SWAP) delivering a scathing verdict on how the project had been managed in May 2025.
Beckery Construction Company Ltd., the company set up to deliver the £2.89m project, collapsed into liquidation in early-November, with Glastonbury Nub News reporting that it owed more than £686,000 to creditors (including 26 local firms) with just £4,800 of assets.
Auditors Grant Thornton have now revealed that payments continued to be made to the project months after the official ‘pause’ – with Conservative opposition leader Councillor Diogo Rodrigues stating that “heads must roll” in light of the news.
The council has responded that the money was used to pay apprentices and to ensure the rest of the Red Brick Building was watertight so that it could continue to operate.
Reports first surfaced in May 2024 from local residents that “bricklayers, carpenters, roofers, plumbers, joiners and labourers” associated with the project have not been paid “since March”.
The issue reached boiling point at a full council meeting in March 2025, where health and safety consultant Jonathan Wilkins informed councillors that his wife of 35 years, Angela, had taken her own life in light of the stress caused by the project.
Mr Rodrigues (who represents the Bridgwater East and Bawdrip division) raised the issue when the council’s executive committee met in Taunton on Wednesday morning (December 3).
He said: “The auditors have delivered one of the most damning assessments that this council has ever received.
“This council failed in its basic duties as an accountable body, that senior oversight was missing, that the Life Factory project risks were ignored and that payments kept flowing even after auditors raised serious concerns.
“Residents deserve to know: how did a project with no match funding, no financial controls and no effective oversight continue to receive hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money?
“Who signed off on those payments, who ignored the warnings, and why did this council allow this situation to spiral into police involvement?”
The Grant Thornton report – published before an upcoming meeting of the council’s audit committee – found that payments totalling £420,000 were issued to the Red Brick Building Centre Ltd. between May and December 2024.
Mr Rodrigues continued: “Heads must roll, and people will be looking closely at who has been involved in the Glastonbury town deal from the very beginning.
“Councillor Liz Leyshon highlighted comments from civil servants in 2022 that the Glastonbury town deal was ‘the golden child of the towns fund’ and that it was ‘shimmering’ in the programme.
“It’s such a shame that there’s no ‘shimmer’ left with the failure of the Life Factory.”
Council leader Bill Revans asked Mr Rodrigues to withdraw the phrase “heads must roll”, arguing it was inciting physical violence against elected councillors and thereby violated the council’s ‘debate, not hate’ protocol.
When Mr Rodrigues refused, stating: “I don’t think there’s anything rude about it”, Mr Revans said this matter “would be dealt with through our standards process”.
Councillor Mike Rigby, portfolio holder for economic development, planning and assets, said that the additional payments were necessary to protect the wider Red Brick Building and had been signed off in a completely transparent fashion.
He said: “Stopping capital projects once under way is not as straightforward as just saying ‘stop’.
“Further funding was provided to ensure that the apprentices working on the site were able to complete their work as part of their courses, and that the wall between the Life Factory (‘Building C’) and the event space in ‘Building B’ was made safe, so that the Red Brick Building could continue to trade.
“I’m sure everyone would agree that those were entirely sensible outcomes.
“These arrangements were agreed by the managers in post at the time, and went through the council’s internal financial sign-off processes.
“The matter was discussed by the Glastonbury town deal board, which in February 2024 recognised this as a project of concern.”
Mr Rigby (who represents the Lydeard division near Taunton) said that there was precedent for beginning projects without match funding being secured, citing the use of ‘accelerator funding’ on the same site during the coronavirus pandemic.
He said: “The Red Brick Building, as the grant recipient, planned to use the grant funding to secure the building’s structure and make it weatherproof and watertight while seeking match funding for the fit-out and equipment needed.
“This was how the ‘accelerator funding’ project had delivered, and could have been an appropriate way to proceed. There was no government requirement for town deal grants to be matched.
“However, as the project proceeded, delivery was chaotic and progress slow, and it became apparent that the building couldn’t be secured within the grant funding envelope.
“The picture highlighting the concerns was built from officers and the council members of the town deal board internally raising concerns in late-2023, seeking advice and exploring ways that the project might continue.
“It was this failure to control cost and deliver the secure building that was the key concern.
“In future, any project requiring match funding will be required to secure this before any significant capital commitments are entered into by the council.”
Mr Rigby added that two other projects within the town deal were deemed to be “red-rated” following a recent “health check” – one where planning permission had not yet been granted, and one where “costs had escalated beyond the grant funding envelope”.
Mr Rigby did not name the projects in question, and Somerset Council has been approached for further comment on this matter.
Grant Thornton’s findings will be discussed in depth by the council’s audit committee when it meets in Taunton on Tuesday morning (December 9).