Alpamare, Scarborough: ‘No further payments’ of unpaid loan after council takes control of water park

North Yorkshire Council has confirmed that after taking control of Scarborough’s Alpamare water park last year “there will be no further payments” against the remaining millions of pounds of taxpayer funds loaned to Benchmark Leisure Ltd.

In October last year, the leisure centre’s developer Benchmark went into administration due to rising energy costs.

But the council said it was hoping to reopen the site in time for the main summer tourism season.

Alpamare opened in Scarborough’s North Bay in 2016 with the help of a £9m bail-out loan from the now-defunct Scarborough Council and as of 2022 it still owed North Yorkshire Council £7.8m.

Questions about millions of pounds of taxpayer money that was loaned to the developer in 2013 have led the authority to launch an investigation which it said was “progressing well”.

Investigators led by the council’s internal auditor Veritau have been speaking to “a number of councillors and officers” but said it was “too early to give any outcome of this investigation”.

A cloud of uncertainty still hangs over the £9m loan which was given behind closed doors by Scarborough Borough Council (SBC) to Benchmark Leisure.

The successor authority, North Yorkshire Council, has refused to release details of the information presented to councillors at the meeting in 2013, including a report understood to detail the business case for the loan.

The council said it could not release the report because the “public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information”.

However, the minutes of the meeting show that some of the councillors who voted in favour of the loan continue to hold senior positions within the new authority.

Former leader of SBC, Coun Derek Bastiman, voted in favour of the loan and is now North Yorkshire Council’s executive member for open to business.

Asked whether Coun Bastiman would be recusing himself to avoid influencing the investigation, a council spokesperson said: “As our internal auditors, Veritau undertakes its work independently, its report will not be influenced by anyone.”

Whilst a decision is yet to be made on who will operate the Alpamare site once it reopens, the authority said it was “currently reviewing options” and was hoping to open by the summer.

“[We] hope that measures will be in place to open the facility in time for the main summer tourism season this year,” the spokesperson added.