Breckland Council’s sale of the Barnham Broom Hotel, Spa & Golf Club freehold was not, by any sensible financial measure, profitable, despite what was implied in public statements. The Conservative-run council said they bought the 237-acre club for £7 million in 2006 and sold it back to its founder in 2025 for £6.9 million. Already that sounds like a loss.

The reality is worse.

Let’s start with the purchase price. For years, the council has quoted £7 million. But that’s just the sale price, not the full cost to taxpayers. In truth, the council also paid:

£329,000 in Stamp Duty
£153,996 in professional fees

That brings the actual cost of purchase to £7,482,996 that’s 6.9% more than the council has repeatedly stated. Though Breckland has stated that it “purchased the property for £7mn plus normal purchaser costs like stamp duty and fees.” A small detail? Not when these amount to half a million pounds.

The sale

Members of the opposition groups voted against the sale at a scrutiny meeting in late 2023, but it was later passed by the Conservative-controlled cabinet. They then claimed they sold the freehold for £6.9mn. But a Freedom of Information (FOI) request has confirmed that they had to pay back £2,156,250 of that under a deed of variation agreed in 2013. This was a 31.25% “beneficial interest” payable to account for the value of improvements made by the tenant.

So, the actual income Breckland Council received from the sale was £4,743,750 which is a full £2.74mn loss versus the actual amount they paid out in 2006.

Yet, when residents questioned the logic of this deal, cabinet member for finance Paul Hewett responded not with facts, but with frustration by dismissing critics as “keyboard warriors”.

Transparency not really

Nowhere in the council’s press release was this 31.25% payback mentioned. No clarification in public interviews. No breakdown of how much was actually received. Just a flat number £6.9mn repeated often enough to hope it would be accepted as true.

But this raises a fundamental question: Why did it take a FOI request to find out what the council really pocketed from the deal?

Councillor Hewett has accused the public of not knowing the facts. But the public can only know the facts when the council chooses to disclose them.

And when a public body withholds key financial information, like the real purchase cost or the sale deductions, while presenting a rosier picture in the media, it’s not just poor communication. It borders on misrepresentation.

Seven principles of public life

What happened to the Nolan Principles?

It’s worth stating, again, that elected councillors are required to adhere to the Nolan Principles of Public Life. These include:

Openness
Honesty
Accountability
Integrity
Objectivity
Selflessness
Leadership

In this case, when it comes to Breckland Council, several of those principles appear to have gone out of the window.

You can’t claim to be honest and open when you withhold over £482,000 in extra purchase costs and a £2.1 million clawback from your financial narrative. And you can’t be accountable when you ridicule your own residents for daring to ask why millions of pounds seem to have vanished from the public purse.

The real financial picture

Here are the key figures in black and white:

Total cost to taxpayers (2006): £7,482,996
Gross sale price (2025): £6,900,000
Deduction paid back to tenant: £2,156,250
Net proceeds received: £4,743,750
Net capital loss: £2,739,246

Even if you add around £6.5mn in rent collected over 19 years, that only brings the total return to around £11.2mn. But the original £7.48mn investment would be worth roughly £11.5 million today after inflation. That puts the council’s total return on investment at a real-terms loss.

This wasn’t just a bad investment. It was a mishandled asset, quietly disposed of with minimal transparency and then defended with bluster and derision.

Councillors must be better than this

Public scrutiny isn’t a nuisance. It is a democratic right. Calling your constituents “keyboard warriors” because they want to know how millions of pounds were spent and lost is both arrogant and unprofessional.

If Breckland Council wants to rebuild trust, they must:

Fully disclose the finances behind the Barnham Broom deal not just sale and purchase prices, but all fees, obligations, and deductions.
Acknowledge the full capital loss, not hide behind creative accounting.
Recommit to the Nolan Principles not just in theory, but in every decision, press release, and interaction with the public.

This isn’t about political point-scoring. It’s about basic standards of governance. If councillors want the respect of their electorate, they must act like public servants, not sales reps trying to spin a loss into a win.

East Anglia Bylines has reached out to Breckland Council for comment.