A construction firm linked to Newcastle’s Labour leader has been stripped of a building contract by the city council.
Local authority bosses have terminated an agreement with Orca LGS Solutions, which was behind a development in Gosforth that now stands unfinished, due to the company “not meeting required contractual performance”.
The North Shields-based firm has ties to the council’s leader, Nick Kemp, who is known to have lobbied civic centre officials on Orca’s behalf prior to the power struggle that saw him succeed Nick Forbes as the city's Labour supremo earlier this year. The Byker ward councillor’s LinkedIn profile states that he has been Orca’s “Director of New Business and Housing Strategy” since 2018 – though he is not actually employed by the company, rather they are a client of his own PR and lobbying agency NKA Public Affairs.
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The construction firm was appointed by the council in 2019 to build homes at Aln Crescent in Gosforth, which remain incomplete, but has now been stripped of that contract. When asked by the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS), the council said it was unable to confirm what level of financial hit it had suffered as a result of Orca’s contract being terminated.
In emails seen by the LDRS, Coun Kemp had told council staff last year that Orca offered a “fantastic opportunity” and was “keen to develop a strong relationship” with the authority.
A council spokesman said: “We contracted Orca to provide a small number of low-cost modular homes as part of a pilot scheme. Due to the company not meeting required contractual performance we have now terminated that contract.
“We may appoint an alternative contractor to complete the project and so it is not possible to assess the scale of the costs to the authority at this stage, however we will endeavour to keep these to a minimum. The council does not hold any other contracts with the company.”
The LDRS has attempted to contact Orca LGS Solutions for a comment.
This summer, Coun Kemp was the subject of a complaint by a member of the public regarding the fact that his role with Orca is not declared on the council’s register of interests. That was dismissed on the grounds that he is not directly employed by Orca and was given his title with the company for the purposes of “outward facing activity”, with local authority legal chiefs confirming Coun Kemp had not previously been required to register details of all the organisations that NKA provides services for.
The decision to award Orca the housebuilding contract was made at a cabinet meeting in November 2019, at which Coun Kemp was present but did not declare an interest.
At Labour’s national conference in September, members from the Newcastle Central Constituency Labour Party put forward a motion to ban anyone who works as a lobbyist from being chosen as an election candidate. That proposal, which could have left Coun Kemp ineligible to stand as a councillor if approved, was overwhelmingly defeated at the conference in Liverpool by a margin of 79.1% to 20.9%.
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