Welcome to Shropshire, where the houses are public, the risks are private, and the only thing commercial is the branding.
Let me introduce you to Cornovii Developments Ltd, Cornovii Investments Ltd, and STAR Housing — a trilogy of publicly owned entities with overlapping leadership, shared liabilities, and a striking ability to shuffle assets faster than the oversight committee can blink. All three are under the executive stewardship of Harpreet Rayet, a man of many titles and even more responsibilities. He builds, sells, rents and oversees it all — sometimes, to himself.
The Business Plan?
Borrow from the Council. Build. Sell. Repay. Repeat.
Cornovii Developments is a classic council-backed housebuilder, only instead of external investors, it runs on public loans. Up to £69 million of them. The plan? Build homes, sell them at pace, pay the council back. But when the housing market coughs, this circular model starts to wheeze.
And wheeze it has.
Faced with sluggish sales, Cornovii began quietly offloading homes to Cornovii Investments — its rental twin. Ten at Ifton Heath, more at London Road. Why? Because unsold stock doesn’t repay debt. Rented stock does… slowly. So now, the sales arm sells to the rental arm, and both are run by the same executive. It’s like borrowing your own wallet to buy your own car, then asking the Government for petrol money.
STAR Housing: The Unsung Middleman
STAR Housing manages council homes and new builds. It also shares personnel, systems and direction with Cornovii. Sometimes it buys from Cornovii. Sometimes it doesn’t. But it definitely doesn’t operate at arm’s length. So who checks that prices are fair? That risk is ring-fenced? That interest is earned and not just journaled into oblivion? Apparently, everyone and no one.
They saw the writing on the wall. The resignation notices piled up — first Rosamund Bridges, then Ian Churms — rats leaving a sinking ship before the hatch was even closed. When the music stopped, everyone wanted to be under the chair.
Oversight or Overlooked?
This is where the magic really happens. Rayet Harpreet is not just a director; he’s the whole boardroom on speed dial. He signs off homes moving from one company to another. He directs development at STAR Housing and Cornovii simultaneously. He’s refereeing his own penalty shoot-out. The only thing missing is the whistle.
Enter Stage Left: Section 114
With Shropshire Council now in need of emergency Government support to keep the lights on until March 2026, the commercial fiction collapses. A Section 114 declaration could be the inevitable next step. the local authority version of bankruptcy protection — means one thing: non-essential spending gets frozen. Guess what Cornovii is? Exactly.
If loans can’t be serviced and assets can’t be sold, the council becomes an accidental landlord with a £69 million hangover. That’s not enterprise. That’s exposure. The homes held by Cornovii Investments might be the first on the auction block.
The Final Audit
This is no longer about planning permissions and project timelines. It’s about public value. Who signed what? Who assessed risk? Who benefited?
Because if Shropshire’s idea of housing strategy is to borrow money from itself, lend it to itself, sell homes to itself, and then declare financial emergency when the cycle breaks — then perhaps it’s time for a grown-up in the room.
No more elephants. Just accountability.
The Last Word
They say insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. By that measure, Shropshire Council could open its own asylum.
How many times must a council throw taxpayers’ money into commercial ventures it neither understands nor controls before the penny finally drops? Cornovii was meant to be regeneration; it has become repetition. Public money in, optimism out, and then another polite report about lessons learned — just before they do it all again.
If competence were a commodity, the council couldn’t afford to build it.
The Fallout at Street Level
When Cornovii crashes, it won’t be the executives who pay — it’ll be the towns.
Across Shropshire, stalled housing schemes will litter the landscape like abandoned promises. Builders will pack up, plots will rust, and “affordable homes” will vanish into the same void as accountability.
Council debt will be written off in the same breath as local services. Libraries, leisure centres and youth hubs will pay the interest on Shrewsbury’s housing daydreams.
Oswestry, Market Drayton, Ludlow, Newport, Whitchurch, Wem and Bridgnorth will be left with nothing but fenced-off fields, higher rents, and a new skyline of half-finished foundations.
Private developers will swoop in to finish what the Council couldn’t — on their own terms, with profit not people in mind.
Cornovii was supposed to build communities; instead, it’s building resentment.
When the dust settles, Shropshire will have fewer homes, fewer services, and one more lesson it refuses to learn.
Postscript: The FOI Silence
Five Freedom of Information requests were sent on 24 October 2025, covering Cornovii’s finances, inter-company transactions, and governance records. As of 30 October 2025, none have been answered. That makes them 7 working days late, breaching the statutory 20-working-day deadline.
Even the involvement of the Cabinet Member for Housing has failed to prompt a response. Transparency, it seems, has joined solvency on Shropshire Council’s missing list.
The Alternative Council 