Decision details

The Council entered into a lease agreement with Wycombe Film Studio on 14th April 2022, which would provide revenue income for 5 years. During this lease, Wycombe Film Studio were obliged (under an agreement for lease) to pursue a planning application for a film studio development. The current tenant Wycombe Park Ltd (name changed on 21st November 2024 from Wycombe Film Studio) had been taken over by the main funder and the management of the company was being undertaken by new Directors who were also Directors of the funder. Details of the lease arrangement were within Confidential Appendix 5 of the report.

The current tenant, Wycombe Park Ltd, was unlikely to progress a film studio development, because the landscape had changed commercially and from a funding perspective. The tenant was looking into ways to extract value from the site and had taken advice from their own agents and determined that their best exit strategy was to abandon the film studio project and to enter into an agreement with the Council to sell the site for use as a Data Centre.

RESOLVED

1 That the Service Director for Commercial Property and Regeneration in consultation with Cabinet Member for Accessible Housing and Resources be authorised to:

a.  negotiate with the tenant to agree heads of terms and subsequently agree a contract, exchange and complete with the tenant for the marketing and disposal of the site jointly in accordance with the contents of this report for a Data Centre usage (Option 2 in the confidential annex to this report).

b. In parallel with recommendation a, investigations into power availability will be progressed.

c.  if required terminate the Lease agreement by serving a valid notice on the tenant, on the earliest date after the Cabinet approval, that corresponds to the Long- Stop date in the tenancy (earliest termination is 27^th December 2024).

d. negotiate with the long leaseholder of the aerodrome, to include a further 6 acres in the disposal (Site C), subject to those terms coming back to Cabinet for authority to proceed to market.

e. if negotiations with the tenant are successful, to:

i. submit a planning application to change the use of Site A (funded by the tenant) and part of the area around Site A to accommodate a Data Centre (DC) development.

ii. market the site as a Data centre development site as set out in this paper, agree heads of terms with a potential purchaser, and bring back a paper to Cabinet for authority to subsequently dispose of the site.

f.  If negotiations with the tenant are unsuccessful, Service Director for Commercial Property and Regeneration is further authorised in consultation with the Cabinet Member for Accessible Housing and Resources to explore other options to obtain power, such as appropriation of the site under section 122 of the Local Government Act 1972, and consider other options for the site disposal for employment uses.