BRENTWOOD Borough Council has defended its choice of agents acting to negotiate the best terms with Stockland – even though there is a pecuniary interest between the two.
Brentwood Borough Council says there is no conflict of interest between CBRE – a property consultancy company – and developers Stockland, which outsourced the management of its office and industrial assets to CBRE in 2011.
A spokesman for the council said: "It is common for companies the size of CBRE to act for different clients that are connected to a development.
"CBRE assures us that it has rigorous internal procedures in place to manage situations where clients are on both sides of a project and that these procedures form part of their ISO accredited quality management system.
"CBRE have also told us that there is no involvement of the people advising the Council and the team in a different part of the company advising Stockland on its industrial portfolio.
"Different filing systems are in place and neither team can access the other's digital data over the IT network."