BOURNEMOUTH council’s £49 million investment in a retail park has been defended, despite the revelation that it had missed out on £1 million in rent due to shops going into administration.

Cabinet member for economic growth, Cllr Philip Broadhead, said that the Mallard Road retail park was still bringing in a profit, despite the struggles of some of its tenants.

His comments followed the publication of details of a confidential council report which showed that the council’s predicted income had fallen from £2.5 million to £1.5 million.

Bournemouth council bought the retail park in September 2017 using £49 million it had borrowed from other local authorities.

Speaking last year, Cllr Broadhead said that the investment would provide £600,000 a year profit to the council.

However, this has been revised down to due to a predicted reduction in rent due to the financial struggles of Homebase and Carpetright.

Both have entered three-year company voluntary arrangements, reducing the former’s rent from £920,000 to £92,000 and halved the latter’s.

At Wednesday’s meeting of the cabinet, Cllr Broadhead criticised the Bournemouth Echo for publishing details of the report, saying it jeopardised negotiations with new tenants it had lined up for the empty unit next to Aldi and former JYSK store.

“[The coverage] puts council tax-payers in a very difficult position and it doesn’t put the council in a very good position,” he said.

“It’s not losing money. Since we have owned it, the profit we have received is £3.2 million. Of that, we have put nearly £2 million into the reserve fund [for the retail park] and £900,000 into the budget.”

He said that the profits were worth the equivalent of the council employing about 40 apprentices each year and that without the income it could have been forced to make cuts to frontline services.

“The rent does drop next year but even with that we will be making a very healthy profit,” he added.

He said that the council was forecasting it would make a £400,000 profit from the retail park this year, dropping to £300,000 next year.

At Wednesday’s meeting, members of the cabinet unanimously approved plans to sign deals with two new tenants for empty units the site and backed £1 million in alterations to the two units and the Homebase store.