Exclusive: Peter Mitchell’s company claimed to be a government partner. Unsurprisingly, that was a lie

More details about the Big Help empire and its creative business deals

Dear readers — earlier this week, Abi sat down to write Part Four of our investigation into Big Help Project. For the past year, she’s been looking into the charity, which is currently subject to an inquiry by the Charity Commission for conflicts of interest and the potential mismanagement of funds. 

Our investigations so far have uncovered that Peter Mitchell (a former Labour councillor in Croxteth) and his partner Colette Goulding (a sitting Labour councillor for West Derby Muirhead) have moved at least £5 million out of the charity into private for-profit companies they mostly own.

Since we revealed that information last week, there have been many calls for Goulding to resign from her role as councillor. A few days ago, Lib Dem leader Carl Cashman wrote an open letter to council leader Liam Robinson, asking him to consider her position in light of the allegations. When we asked the council if Goulding’s role was tenable, they told us they were unable to comment on the “behaviour of elected members”. 

Now, in events that surprise even us, this story takes yet another shocking turn. 

We’ve been looking at another company that both Mitchell and Goulding have been involved in: a property company called Social Value Housing that owns homes in Liverpool and Wales.

Social Value Housing looked like one of the most significant companies in the Big Help empire because it has been an Investment Partner of Homes England — the government’s main housing agency — since 2021. We wanted to know why the government continued to work with an organisation run by people involved in huge amounts of money being taken from a charity.

Yet in a remarkable revelation, Homes England told us that Social Value Housing’s website had instead been falsely claiming to be an Investment Partner for over three years. In all of our requests for comment about the partnership, Social Value Housing has not once responded. Now, perhaps we know why. 

That is today’s story — who is behind the company perpetuating this falsehood, and how do Mitchell and Goulding play a role?

Editor’s note: To read this story you’ll need to be a paying member of The Post. While some parts of this investigation have been free to read, they have by no means been free to produce. Our reporters have spent hours digging through documents, phoning up sources and chasing leads to pull this story together. If you want to see more journalism like this in Merseyside, that holds powerful people and institutions to account, then please click the button below to subscribe.

---

By Abi Whistance

Social Value Housing was set up in April 2020. The company, whose mission is to provide “sustainable homes” across England, was the brainchild of its first three directors — Martin Gerrelli, Daniel Anders and Steve Sargent — who each had a housing background. Within a year of establishing their new company, they put in a bid to become an ‘Investment Partner’ of the government’s main housing agency, Homes England. If Social Value Housing received this Investment Partner status, it would allow them to apply for grants from the government’s £11.5 billion Affordable Homes Programme.

It wasn’t long before Social Value Housing made a grand announcement. In a press release published on their website on 7th June 2021, they said they were “delighted… that following a rigorous process we qualified as an Investment Partner with Homes England.” In a quote included in that press release, director Martin Gerrelli said the extra funding and support from Homes England gave the company a “significant boost”. 

Soon after, a banner was uploaded onto the company website, reading: “Social Value Housing Limited is proud to be a Homes England Investment Partner”. Below it was a reproduction of the official government Homes England logo. 

Social Value Housing’s website. Photo: Screenshot taken on 5th September 2024

So we were surprised by the response Homes England sent us when we approached them about this partnership earlier this week. “We can confirm Social Value Housing Limited is not an Investment Partner (IP) of the Affordable Housing Programme (AHP),” they told us. Homes England had received an application from Social Value Housing to become an Investment Partner back in 2021, but they said this was “not progressed as the associated bid for grant funding was not taken further.”

If that’s the case, then why did Social Value Housing make this false announcement, and why do they continue to display a fake banner on their website?