COUNCIL bosses have been slammed for keeping secret reports on a stadium project set to cost the taxpayer up to £750,000.

Wycombe District Council has refused to supply The Bucks Free Press with reports into the project to move Adams Park, home of Wycombe Wanderers and London Wasps.

The Conservative-controlled council spent up to £80,000 last year on feasibility studies from consultants Alan Stratford Associations and PMP Genesis. It has committed up to £750,000.

The Bucks Free Press understands that one ASA report, from September last year, concludes it is feasible to put a stadium and housing at Wycombe Air Park and retain the facility.

Cllr Steve Guy, leader of the Liberal Democrat group on WDC, hit out at the move.

He said: “At the end of the day, this is public money that is being spent and the public deserve as much detail as we can possibly give them.

“I see some documents I get that are confidential and it look at it and think ‘it is only that paragraph that needs to be blacked out’.”

Council leader Cllr Clarke said no site had been chosen. She said: “Until that work is done there is no point putting anything out.”

In his response to the latest FOI request, WDC head of property services Charles Brocklehurst said financial advice from PMP Genesis was bound by a ‘confidentiality agreement’.

Keeping it secret ‘outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information’ as firms would be put off working with WDC if it were made public, he said.

An ASA report titled ‘technical assessment of co-locating a stadium and residential development at Wycombe Air Park’ is understood to back the scheme – but was not provided by WDC .

Only one ASA report is in the public domain. This says there is a ‘sufficient space’ for the stadium plan and noise affecting homes would be ‘slightly higher’.

It also backs building houses as part of the re-development. It is thought this will enable a deal whereby the housing developer pays towards the stadium.

The council has previously run into controversy over its use of the FOI act – introduced in 2005 – in relation to the stadium.

It blacked out part of a covenant relating to the sale of the air park from the RAF to the council in the 1960s– but the Ministry of Defence left it in when asked separately.

The censored section could cast doubt over the viability of using the air park as it demands it not to be used ‘noisy noxious or offensive trade or business or for any purpose which may be or become a nuisance damage or annoyance’.

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