'Lessons learnt' over ill-fated sale of bus depot

The bus depot, seen here before its closure in 2013, served Northampton from the 1900s

A council has insisted lessons have been learned from selling off a bus depot which then had to be bought back for twice the sale price.

West Northamptonshire Council is about to agree a similar sell-off involving another derelict building in Northampton.

The council sold St James bus depot in 2014 to a shoe firm which planned to move there, but had to buy it back nearly a decade later.

It is now planning to sell Horizon House to another shoe company which wants a new factory site.

The St James bus depot was the home of Northampton's red buses and trams from the 1900s but the last bus rolled out of the gates in 2013.

A year later, the internationally-famous Northampton shoe company, Church's, bought the site so it could expand its operations from its own headquarters next door.

The NN Journal revealed that the sale price was £1.6m.

A decade later the depot was empty and boarded up, and the council bought it back for £3.3m to convert it into high-quality homes.

The Northampton Transport Heritage group started a campaign to save the depot for the community.

The 1933 office block of the depot is now a listed building

The group applied for listed status, which has now been granted for the 1933 office building on the site.

The latest proposed sale involves Horizon House, another listed building off the St Peter's Way roundabout which was bought by Northampton Borough Council in 2017 but never developed.

The council's cabinet has agreed to sell it to the boot and shoe maker John Lobb, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

Horizon House is not far from the St James Bus Depot and was once the home of Northampton Gas Company

At a cabinet meeting on 8 October, the deputy leader of the Labour Group, Bob Purser, compared the Horizon House sale to the “old bus garage debacle”.

He asked the cabinet if the council had “learnt the lessons” from the unfulfilled bus depot plans.

Horizon House has fallen into disrepair and has been vandalised

Daniel Lister, portfolio holder for local economy, said that the council had learnt from its previous venture.

He added that the buyback is ‘correct’ so that WNC would be able to purchase Horizon House back at the purchase price if needed.

He said that the sale price for the John Lobb project matched the independent market valuation.

It also supported the creation of jobs, the preservation of the listed building’s heritage and strengthening Northampton’s position in the luxury footwear industry.