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By Gazette Investigations

15th January 2026

Michael Cullen, responsible for finance at the time at Stockport Council as Borough Treasurer and currently Chief Executive at Stockport Council.

Monitoring Officer Vicki Bates has blocked all information relating to this matter as vexatious for many years, and she also controls what councillors/council officers are allowed to receive.

Internal council documents relating to the North Reddish primary school project raise serious and unresolved questions about whether escalating costs, planning problems and funding risks were deliberately diluted before being reported to senior decision-makers.

The papers, released under the Freedom of Information Act, show that by early 2007 officers were already recording “obvious concern over funding”, driven by design changes, reprogramming delays and inflation. Yet later assurances from senior finance officers described cost controls as satisfactory.

Campaigners now say the two positions cannot both be true.

“Obvious concern over funding”

A pre-meeting agenda dated 30 March 2007 for the new primary school on Harcourt Street is explicit about the project’s worsening financial position.

Agenda item eight states:

“Review revised estimate. Major impact is the SE requirements and the reprogramming inflation. Noted. Obvious concern over funding.”

The document makes clear that cost pressures were already significant and that officers were actively looking for alternative funding sources.

This was not a minor budget fluctuation. It was a recognition, in writing, that the project’s financial footing was unstable.

Yet the message upward was softened

Despite this, other documents show that senior financial oversight later concluded that cost control arrangements were “fine”.

Critics say this creates a fundamental contradiction.

“You cannot have ‘obvious concern over funding’ on the ground while simultaneously assuring the system above that everything is under control,” said one local campaigner. “Either the warning signs were ignored, or they were filtered.”

Selective reporting?

The most troubling line in the agenda appears at item ten:

“Advice required on how much of the above goes in the highlight report for May’s Project Board… not a full Highlight report.”

Campaigners argue this wording strongly suggests selective disclosure at a critical moment.

“This isn’t about tidying up a report,” said a former public-sector project manager familiar with governance standards. “It reads like a discussion about what not to tell the board.”

“If elected members only received highlights while officers privately acknowledged serious funding problems, that undermines the entire concept of scrutiny.”

Planning pressure and design drift

The same agenda shows growing instability in the project’s scope.

One item asks whether pressure can be put on a planning officer to restart the planning process, language that critics say is deeply inappropriate.

Another records that a “temporary” classroom had already been removed to make way for changing requirements, potentially triggering yet another planning application — a change with both cost and delay implications.

Each adjustment increased risk. Each risk carried financial consequences. Yet the project continued.

Confidentiality before accountability

Earlier emails relating to the project repeatedly stress the need for confidentiality before matters became “public knowledge” at the Project Board.

Campaigners say this pattern matters.

“Confidentiality has a legitimate purpose,” said one resident. “But when it consistently coincides with rising costs and shrinking transparency, it stops looking protective and starts looking defensive.”

A governance failure?

The documents do not prove wrongdoing. But they do show a culture in which:

  • Costs were rising rapidly
  • Funding concerns were explicitly recorded
  • Planning problems persisted
  • Reporting upwards was consciously limited

That combination, critics argue, represents a governance failure — even if no rules were technically broken.

“This isn’t about one decision,” said a campaigner. “It’s about a system that appeared more focused on managing the message than confronting the problem.”

Still unanswered questions

To this day, key questions remain unanswered:

  • Why were serious funding concerns reduced to “highlights”?
  • Why did financial assurances remain positive despite escalating costs?
  • Who decided what the Project Board should — and should not — be told?
  • At what point did elected members receive the full picture, if at all?

For residents, the issue is not historical curiosity. It is trust.

“When public money is involved,” one local resident said, “being told ‘all is fine’ when the paperwork says otherwise is not a mistake — it’s a breach of confidence.”