I have now re-checked my recollection.
The £300,000 figure was what was left in about 1995-6 when the Barnes Athletic track was commissioned by Leisure Services. That was my first contact with this money as a councillor.
The total paid was indeed originally £2,500,000, which was earmarked for Leisure Services uses.
So if you substitute this figure for £300,000 in my original account, that's what happened.
I cannot form a conclusive view as to whether this sum was an adequate compensation for the loss in planning terms of a leisure use on this site, but given that the rink has ceased trading, and any replacement leisure facility on the site would probably have to be quite low key, given the access problems; the amount seems rather higher than what one might expect, given that the best the council could have expected from the original scheme was a long term reversionary interest (which might be non-existent as the council only has a lease) in someone else's ice rink.
Until this site compelled me to reappraise my understanding of what had happened, I had thought that the element of the decision which was subject to criticism was the amount of compensation received. However, given that the council had no legal interest in the land, the amount of compensation seems really very generous, and I would have hoped that someone might even have said something nice about it.
Of course if the site were being developed today, we would have been able to hold out for affordable housing as well.
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