I first knew I was a nerd when I was the only one of the 27 Lib Dem Councillors on Durham County Council to ask to go on the audit committee. I’ll certainly know it on Thursday when I spend the morning on the Audit Committee at the County Council, and the afternoon at the Audit Committee of the District Council.

The result of this nerdiness was about four hours spent going through accounts. And did I come up with anything? Well actually, yes I did. Nothing earth shattering, but one  question I raised was how the number of allotments had risen from 68 to 84. This produced the answer that actually they hadn’t. The original figure of 64 was just plain wrong, as was 84. It should have been 87!

Was it for this that I entered local politics. Not really. Except that taking the job seriously, looking at the detail, asking the questions, is the absolutely necessary part of councillors making sure that the administration is doing the job right. And of course, there were more interesting questions.

I was particularly taken by the answer to my question about how much land had been transferred to Project Genesis this year, and for what price? The answer apparently is 27.39 hectares (which you will instantly know to be 67.68 acres) for £2 “as specified in the Genesis Project agreement”. Now that did interest me because although I’ve heard this figure before, I’ve never seen it written in any of the original agreement papers. In fact, if the papers I’ve been provided with are accurate copies, the figure in the supervision agreement is actually blank!

When you link that to the fact that the original deed setting up the Genesis Trust specified that the leader of the largest opposition party on the council should be represented on the trustees ex officio, but the current one was unaware of it, you wonder exactly what control our council has been exerting over the trust.

Sniffer Owen is hoping for answers to that on Wednesday’s meeting. Let me know if you’re interested too.

I’m expecting a surge in readership in the next twenty-four hours as people log in to see what Project Genesis was designed to do to our townscape!

I’m not sure about the precise dates of these two maps, but the print and low tech black and white design of this one B&W Genesis Map (click to open) and the detail makes it clear that it is the earliest. The Consett bypass still looks to be under construction, and certainly there is no idea that Consett is to have so much housing developed. Nor is there any suggestion that the heart of Consett should become skewed towards the Berry Edge site which many people see as the result of moving the Technical College, Sports Centre and proposed retail park there.

The second map project-genesis-trust-map.pdf (click to open) is later with the Consett bypass constructed and the earliest buildings on the Hownsgill Industrial Estate. A little bit of extra housing has just sneaked into the plan, too, down at Templetown.

The original plan was never meant to be set in tablets of stone, and that is made clear in the documents of the time, but what was meant to happen was clear from the article printed yesterday. Any change had to be approved by the trustees, upon which the Council is represented. The upshot of that should clearly have been that changes were reported back to the council , together with their justification. That’s the argument which is still going on - and it also shows the biggest weakness of the scheme.

A primary motivation of the scheme appears to have been to enable access to government grants, particularly Derelict Land Grant, on favourable terms which would not have been available to the council. There’s nothing wrong with that - except that in giving away control of the land to a development company (whose ownership has changed) and a charity (whose trustees have changed out of all recognition in a decade and a half) true accountability for this legacy from Consett’s past was also given away for all time.

All I’m interested now is in recovering as much of that accountability as is possible, through pressure and publicity, and through the active involvement of the Derwentside District Council Audit Committee. This is vital before we move into the new unitary authority which will lack knowledge of the history of the project, and may lack the will to influence the future of the project.

Readers of this blog are likely to be aware that I have had an interest in Project Genesis for some time, and have attempted to get the Audit Committee of Derwentside District Council to evaluate the project to date as well as looking at its future as we move into a unitary authority. I haven’t succeeded so far, but have sought again to have it included in the June meeting so watch this space!

Some people may think I am a bit one sided in my view which is that anything which is not naturally transparent needs to be held up to the light if you’re to see through it. So just to show how keen I am to see things from all sides I attach a file 2008_06_11_22_00_04.pdf with the official story of the project up to 2003 which you can also view at http://www.derwentside.gov.uk/getmedia.cfm?mediaid=1023 pages 10 & 11.

It’s worth reading because it sets out clearly what the council saw as the achievements of the project back in 2003 - and also reminds us that it hasn’t noticeably kept its promise in the last paragraph; “the Council will - as always - keep the public informed.”

In the interests of keeping you informed, tomorrow I’ll be publishing the map of the original master plan. I know you’ll look forward to that. And no doubt you’ll make your own judgements about how effectively the Trust, on which the Council has been represented, has supervised the amendments to the Master Plan.

Recent Focus Readers will have seen my article asking where the benefits are to be found from Project Genesis. The article was taken up and developed in The Journal on Thursday. You can see the link here: http://www.journallive.co.uk/north-east-news/todays-news/2008/03/27/call-for-probe-into-charity-61634-20678991/

I’ve been doing quite a lot of digging into this project, and accept that much has been done through it, but am still to be convinced that it has delivered, and more importantly will deliver, all it can for Consett.

I propose to publish a series of articles with my findings and questions on the project through this site. I would very much appreciate two things from you, the readers:

1. To provide me with anything you know about the Project, good, bad or indifferent. You can post a comment of email me direct.

2. To write to Mike Clark (Chief Executive of Derwentside Council), Alex Watson (Leader of Derwentside Council) and Denise Bennett (Chair of the Council audit committee) urging them to support my call for the audit committee to examine the project: what it has achieved, why the charitable trust has received so little money - and spent so little even of what it has received, and how the benefits are to be protected for Derwentside when Derwentside ceases to exist.

According to Alex Watson Project Genesis has delivered “hundreds of millions of pounds” to Consett. With that much money at stake some scrutiny of the books has to be in order!