Slough Borough Council has refused to say what share of the profits it will get from selling a former community centre’s land.

Councillors on the leading cabinet committee agreed on Monday, October 21 that the land where the Haymill Centre stood should be sold for more than £3.5 million.

However the council has refused to say what share of the proceeds it will get, and how much will go to a private developer, Morgan Sindall – saying only that the deal ‘is confidential’.

The land is to the south of Haybrook College, and is where the Haymill Centre stood until it was demolished in 2015.

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Slough Borough Council says it has owned the land ‘for many years’ and was used as a community centre shared with Haybrook College Trust until 2013.

The council had hoped to build affordable housing there through Slough Urban Renewal – a joint project between it and private developer Morgan Sindall.

But the project was abandoned after the council went effectively bankrupt in 2021, and Slough Urban Renewal is to be wound up with its development sites sold off.

Now council leaders have agreed that the Haymill site can be sold after the Slough Urban Renewal board found a buyer in June this year.

Council documents say the sale is ‘in excess’ of the £3.5 minimum it had been marketed for, and ‘in line’ with a recent valuation of some £5.14 million.

But the council is keeping the exact price confidential, along with details of how the money would be split between the council and Morgan Sindall.

Councillors who wanted to ask about this at Monday’s cabinet meeting – which is held in public – were told they could only discuss this once the press had left.

By law, council meetings have to be held in public. But the press and public can be excluded from a meeting when information relating to financial and business affairs of any person or organisation is being discussed.

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However the law also says that press and public should only be excluded from meetings if the public interest in keeping the information private is greater than the public interest in disclosing it.

The Observer sent detailed questions to Slough Borough Council asking if it had considered the public interest in revealing how much money it would make from the sale of its land, and how much would go to a private company.

It comes after the council revealed that it was struggling to make as much money as it hoped from property sales, and that it may have to make ‘difficult decisions’ about services as a result.

In a nine-word reply, the council did not answer whether it had considered the public interest, saying only that ‘the commercial arrangements of the Haymill Centre are confidential’.