A DEBATE on the future of Wentworth Street car park in Malton was postponed at the 11th hour on legal advice.

Members of Ryedale District Council had been due to consider extending the controversial contract to sell the car park and develop the site into a supermarket at a meeting on Thursday.

A four-year contract between the council and Leeds-based developer GMI Holbeck is due to expire on May 4 and the firm has asked for an extension.

However, a letter from solicitors for the Fitzwilliam Malton Estate (FWE), which has an agreement with supermarket Booths to develop Malton’s livestock market, led the council to defer a decision to take further legal advice.

The letter challenges the exempt information in a report by council chief executive Janet Waggot, saying their client does not accept that the issue of “renewal” to sell Wentworth Street car park to GMI falls within the exemption or that it is right that “the consideration of such an important issue that relates to the future economic wellbeing of the town of Malton should be debated in private”.

Councillor Paul Andrews, who with Councillor Lindsay Burr had put forward a motion to block the proposal, said he had challenged the fact that it was an exempt item, but had received a letter from the council advising him of “dire legal consequences” if he made the report public.

He said: “This is a cover up. I believe there is only one passage in the report which is legally ‘exempt’, and the report could have been made public with that one passage redacted.”

Coun Andrews said the legal letter also points out that if a judicial review triggered by the Estate is successful, the court will order that the planning permission is quashed with an order that the council pays the costs, estimated at about £150,000.

“The council had the opportunity last Thursday to put an end to this unhappy saga, and seek a settlement with the Estate, instead they continue to waste taxpayers’ money on a project which, if they win, will destroy the vitality and viability of Malton town centre, and if they lose, will have cost the council a total of £298,000 in refunding the Estate’s costs – in addition to their own legal and other costs,” he said.

Councillor Linda Cowling, council leader, said the authority had not reconsidered its position concerning the sale and had deferred the decision until after the election when the motion by councillors Burr and Andrews would also be considered by the policy and resources committee and full council.

She said: “Claims that the developer has failed to find an operator for the store are premature, until the planning permission for the store is resolved, the developer has nothing to market. The opposition by the FWE to the plans has resulted in an unprecedented delay to the issue of planning permission.

“I find it hard to understand the argument which says that a store on Wentworth Street car park will have a detrimental impact on retailers in the town centre – yet a store on the livestock market site apparently will not. I do not see the development on the livestock market as a rival to Wentworth Street– it is very different and the two are complimentary to each other.

“The two developments will increase footfall in the town and be beneficial to everyone.”