Around £5 million worth of work has been carried out that breaches rules
Work has been suspended on a major Nottinghamshire project set to create more than 1,000 new jobs after the council in charge was found to have broken several rules. The completion of the government-funded project could now be delayed by another year after Ashfield District Council's boss ordered work to be suspended over the legal issues.
A report says there is no evidence that anyone at Ashfield District Council 'deliberately' sought to avoid the rules, but £5 million worth of work has been carried out so far which breaches them. The issues mainly surround work on the project beginning before contracts had been finalised, as well as the fact that the proper approvals were not obtained when costs ballooned by millions of pounds. The project concerned is the Automated Distribution and Manufacturing Centre , part of wider plans for a £100 million innovation and technology park in Kirkby-in-Ashfield. The ADMC element of the project was funded using £20 million from the government, as well as a £10 million combined contribution from Nottingham Trent University and West Notts College. The purchase of land from Nottinghamshire County Council was completed in January 2025 and construction work was originally set to take around a year, but a delay announced later in 2025 meant the project was not set to be finished until the end of 2026. The rule breaches now mean that the project might not end up being finished until late 2027 and Ashfield District Council has had to ask the government for a deadline extension on delivering the ADMC - which has been agreed. Work on the site was suspended on January 9, 2026, after the rule breaches first came to light and a report from the council's monitoring officer has now been published. Monitoring officers are legally bound to produce a report if they think that any council decisions or plans 'contravene law' or 'constitute maladministration'. The report into the ADMC will now have to be considered by Ashfield District Council's cabinet at an April 13 meeting and work can only resume after that has taken place - though contractors are not expected to be back on site until May. Theresa Hodgkinson, the chief executive of Ashfield District Council, said: 'We identified these issues ourselves, acted immediately, and we are being fully transparent about the steps we are taking. 'The ADMC remains a transformational project for Ashfield. It is central to our plans for economic growth, business innovation and high-quality employment opportunities in the district.' West Notts College and Nottingham Trent University have both been briefed on the issues, as well as local MPs Michelle Welsh and Lee Anderson. The report from Ruth Dennis, Ashfield District Council's monitoring officer, says that separate contracts awarded to the Lindum Group for the construction of the ADMC and the highways works needed for it have still not been finalised. Yet Lindum is well underway with work on the project, something which the monitoring officer says is a breach of both the council's contract procedure rules and financial regulations. Ruth Dennis also raises concerns about another contract to Armson and Partners Ltd for quantity surveyor work, which has again been carried out without the contract being finalised. Another major concern is the fact that the contracts for the ADMC project were split into two - one for the building of the ADMC itself and another for the highways improvements needed. The monitoring officer's report says the splitting up of the project appears to be 'retrospective' and 'artificial' and a report produced after the council's own independent review sheds light on why this happened. The report from Suzanne Jones, an independent consultant, says Ashfield District Council wanted to use a specific scheme for awarding contracts so that they could go to 'regionally based' companies. Yet the scheme only covers projects worth up to £10 million, so the splitting up of the ADMC project was the 'only option'. The report makes clear though: 'It is not in line with the public contract regulations to subdivide packages in order to fit within a framework.' A further concern relates to the fact that advice was not sought from Nottinghamshire County Council , which was again a breach of the rules for a project of this value. Finally, the report from Ruth Dennis says formal approvals should have been sought for the costs of the highways work associated with the ADMC going up from £1.5 million to nearly £10 million. Ashfield District Council has explained that this cost increase relates to the wider project, rather than the ADMC itself. The ADMC will be built on a 30-acre piece of land, but the facility will only take up around four acres, and the council therefore considered how else to make the most out of the site. The broader project is expected to involve the creation of the Ashfield Innovation and Technology Park and it has meant that the highways improvements needed have significantly altered. Initial plans for the ADMC would have created a direct access from Lowmoor Road into the facility's car park. Nottinghamshire County Council, as the highways authority, has instead said a new crossroads was now needed at the junction of Lowmoor Road and Penny Emma Way. Changes to the project mean there is now a £7.7 million budget gap for the overall scheme and Ashfield District Council will have to find a way to fund the difference. The report from Suzanne Jones says factors contributing to the rule breaches include a 'number of changes in senior officers over the period of the project'. The time senior officers had to spend on the project was also 'diluted' by the need to focus on preparing for Local Government Reorganisation and the overall resources available for the project 'were not, in hindsight, adequate'. Ashfield District Council now says it is securing external, experienced project management support for the ADMC scheme and that it should be in place by April 13. The authority also says that initial plans suggest building construction on the ADMC will now be complete in September 2027, with the site then being handed over to the operator in October. Ashfield District Council's boss added: 'All of the work carried out has contributed to the delivery of the project, and payments relate to legitimate work completed on site. There is no suggestion the money has been lost or misused. 'Our focus now is on strengthening governance, and ensuring we are in the strongest possible position to move forward with the project. 'Our aim is to be back on site in early May, and I'll confirm as soon as I can what the revised timeframes for the completion of this flagship project will be.'
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