The Ghost of ’76: did Hillingdon Council’s “Rabbit Breeder” scandal predict our 2025 financial crisis?

A 50-Year Echo

In late 2025, Hillingdon Council faces the gravest financial threat in its history: a projected £36 million deficit, depleted reserves, and the looming possibility of a Section 114 notice (effective bankruptcy). While modern auditors cite “governance failures” and “poor financial management,” a resurfaced BBC report from 1976 suggests this is not a new phenomenon.

The footage from 1976 reveals a council operating with a terrifying disregard for public money – a culture that appears to have mutated rather than vanished. The transition from the chaos of the 1970s to the crisis of 2025 is not a story of change, but of scaling up.

Procurement: From Riverside Piggeries to Grant Thornton

The most damning parallel lies in how the Council awards contracts. The rule of law in public spending – competitive tendering – appears optional in Hillingdon, both then and now.

1976: The RABBIT & Pig Breeder and the Ski Slope

The BBC report details a scandal involving a £100,000 artificial ski slope (approx. £800,000 in today’s money).

• The Contractor: The contract was not given to a civil engineering firm. It was awarded to Brian Hartland, a man who bred pigs at “Riverside Piggeries” and sold rabbits. He did demolition “on the side.”
• The Process: There were no competitive tenders. Hartland admitted he got the job by “word of mouth” and was “chuffed to bits.” There were no written records of how the contract was let.
• The Result: Because he was paid by the load, Hartland dumped whatever he could find to build the mound. The slope was filled with “large lumps of concrete, domestic appliances, mattresses, tires, and old pipes.” To maximize his payout, he even built a “third ski slope” that the council neither needed nor wanted.

2025: The Corporate “Direct Award” TO CONSULTANTS

In 2025, the “pig breeder” has been replaced by the corporate advisory firm Grant Thornton, but the bypass of procedure remains identical. According to Cabinet papers, Hillingdon Council awarded Grant Thornton multiple contracts totaling over £1.8 million between April and November 2025 alone, without open competition.

• Phase 1 (April 2025): A contract for £733,650 was awarded via “single tender” under the “MCF3 Framework.” The justification was “Special Urgency” to “speedily confirm the future structure of the finance team,” bypassing the usual scrutiny call-in period.
• Phase 2 (December 2025): A second “single tender” contract for £746,850 was awarded just eight months later under the “MCF4 Framework.” Again, this was classified as Special Urgency, with the Council leadership explaining they thought it was “critical” to support the budget process.
• Oracle Support: These awards followed a separate decision to pay £357,200 for Oracle accounting software improvements – also a single tender, awarded at the same time as the Phase 2 contract.

The Parallel: Just as Brian Hartland was handed a fortune on a handshake in 1976, Grant Thornton was handed nearly £2 million of public money in 2025 without the market being tested. The scale has changed, but the refusal to tender remains.

The Critics: “Maladministration” vs. “Systemic Weakness”

In 1976, rumors blamed the ski slope’s failure on the rubbish beneath it. In 2025, the Council blamed external factors like asylum costs. However, the statutory “Section 24” report from auditors Ernst & Young (EY) dismantles these excuses, pointing instead to internal incompetence.

• Unreliable Forecasts: Just as the 1976 council built a slope that might collapse, the 2025 Council built a budget on sand. EY criticized the Council for “unreliable forecasts” and failing to understand why “significant financial pressures… emerge” over and above what was budgeted.
• Blame Culture: The 1976 report hinted at officers protecting themselves. In 2025, EY found explicit evidence of “low morale” and “indications of a blame culture” within the finance team, where service managers “do not ‘fully own’ their budgets”.
• Governance Failures: The auditors were “not confident that the urgency… is fully recognised by all decision makers,” citing “systemic weaknesses” in financial management. They concluded that the Council “did not have proper arrangements in place to identify and manage risks,” a modern phrasing for what the 1976 report simply called “maladministration“.

The situation has deteriorated so sharply that the Council has now opened talks with the government for Exceptional Financial Support. This is effectively a bailout mechanism to keep the lights on, proving that the risk of insolvency is far more real than the “rumors” of 1976.

Evasion Tactics: The 79 Invoices vs. “Special Urgency”

The 1976 report provides a masterclass in how officers manipulated books to hide spending – a tactic that resonates with the opacity of 2025.

1976: The 79 Accounts of the Sauna

When the Parks department wanted a £10,000 sauna, they hit a rule: jobs over £500 required tenders.

• The Fix: Officers split the project into 79 separate invoices, averaging £131 each, to evade the threshold.
• The Disguise: Expenses were hidden as “regular maintenance” for the swimming baths next door.

2025: The “Special Urgency” Loophole

Today, the evasion from scrutiny is bureaucratic. To push through the Grant Thornton contracts without delay or debate, the Council repeatedly used “Special Urgency” powers to waive the scrutiny call-in period. This allowed them to implement decisions immediately, preventing opposition councillors from challenging the spending before it was too late.

The Culture of Secrecy

Finally, the mechanism that allowed both scandals to fester was secrecy.

• 1976: The internal report on the ski slope was marked “Private and Confidential,” seen by only 16 of 70 councilors. The rest “nodded it through” without knowing the truth.
• 2025: The transparency gap remains. The reports detailing the justifications for the Grant Thornton awards were classified as “Part II – Members’ Only and Not for Publication,” hiding the full details from the public on the grounds of “financial or business affairs”.

Conclusion

The BBC reporter in 1976 signed off by noting that Hillingdon residents were skiing on a slope full of rubbish “with their fingers crossed.”

Fifty years later, the rubbish has been cleared, but the methodology remains. The Council has traded the chaotic corruption of 1976 – pig breeders and split invoices – for the procedural failures of 2025 – “Special Urgency” waivers and “single tender” awards. The critique from the auditors is clear: Hillingdon is once again operating with “systemic weaknesses,” leaving residents to pick up the bill for a culture that refuses to learn.