The councillor who claims police failed to act when he blew the whistle on Cotswold Water Park fraudster,Dennis Grant,has welcomed news of a fresh investigation into the scandal.

Cllr Esmond Jenkins

Cllr Esmond Jenkins told us this week:“It has taken two years of battling but the people of the Water Park are glad that their concerns about the involvement of others,including those in public office,are finally being taken seriously by the authorities.

A squad from the City of London Police was drafted into Gloucestershire in November to conduct a comprehensive review of the initial inquiry which saw Dennis Grant,former chief executive of environmental charity,The Cotswold Water Park Society,jailed for four years and four months for defrauding the organisation out of £660,000.

It was announced this week that the review had uncovered fresh leads and the London team had been invited to stay on to assist Gloucestershire Constabulary with a completely new investigation.

Cllr Jenkins,head of an Oxfordshire legal practice,was first to alert the police in early 2010 when he tracked down a £150,000 payment made to the Society which was missing from the accounts.

“I was turned away by the police who said I did not have enough evidence to justify an investigation,” he told us.

Weeks later,Grant’s own assistant,Tasha Flaherty,went to the police with similar concerns only to be told the same thing. She tackled Grant and then travelled to Banbury where she found he had set up a phoney account in the name of Society into which he had been diverting funds including large payments from one of the Water Park’s major holiday home developers.

The new inquiry coincides with the release of six previously undisclosed documents by Cotswold Water Park Trust,the body set up to replace the discredited Society after Grant’s arrest.

Grant brokered a deal in December 2007 to transfer the lease of Keynes Country Park,an 85-acre nature reserve and tourist attraction to South Cerney based holiday home developers,The Watermark Group.

Days earlier,on 20 December,Grant and Watermark entered into a previously undisclosed agreement for the Society to acquire further development land and pass it on to Watermark to build holiday homes.

In an unsigned file copy disclosed this week,there are spaces for the signatures of the Society and Watermark but also a space for the signature of the County Solicitor on behalf of GCC. It is now expected that the new police inquiry will attempt to find the original,signed copy.

Cllr Jenkins ,a Cotswold District Council Liberal Democrat representative for the Water Park,said:“The most disturbing part of that agreement ,which appears to have been sanctioned at the highest level at GCC,is that Grant effectively turned the society into an institutionally corrupt organisation by entering into a legal agreement to support all Watermark planning applications while giving no support to competing developers.

“As public guardians of the park’s environment and wildlife,the Society was a statutory consultee holding great sway in planning applications. While the public thought it was behaving even-handedly in the wider interests of the park and its residents,it was,effectively the agent of one developer,acquiring land for the company and smoothing the path for planning consents.”

Cllr Jenkins said:“Along with the parish councils and many residents in the Water Park,I was convinced that Grant was not acting alone and that others at the highest level in local government may have assisted him.

“I fully expect the new investigation to probe into areas of public life in the county where officers previously feared to venture.

“Legal files obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that junior lawyers working for the KCP freeholders,GCC,were so concerned about the land deal in 2007 that they issued several warnings to their superiors. Instead of their concerns being taken seriously they complained that they were being,as they put it,‘bish-boshed’ into rushing the transfer through.”

The council solicitors pointed out that Watermark stood to make millions from holiday home development while the taxpayers of Gloucestershire stood to make only £1-a-year form the deal.

Cllr Jenkins said he expected detectives to interview the GCC lawyers in a bid to identify who had exerted pressure on them.