MotoGP: Circuit of Wales billed for gardening work at director’s house

The Circuit of Wales project is back in the news, after Conservative MP David Davies released invoices that show £35,578 worth of gardening work at director Michael Carrick’s English house was billed to the project.

The invoices show that two years of gardening at Mr Carrick’s house in Cambridge was invoiced to the Heads of the Valleys Development Company, the firm responsible for the project.

Speaking to Wales Online, however, the firm’s business development director Shaun Meadows claimed that there was no irregularity and that it was due to a simple mistake.

“The wrong company name is on the invoices. It shouldn’t be Heads of the Valleys Development Company, but Aventa Capital Partners. It was Aventa that paid them.

“Michael Carrick doesn’t take a salary for his work on the Circuit of Wales. The gardening bills were paid by Aventa because he doesn’t get paid a salary. The payments have been properly declared to the tax authorities.”

Aventa is an investment firm wholly owned by Carrick who claim to ‘create long-term value through regeneration investments in the UK that generate positive economic growth and transformational social impact.’

However, Tory MP Davies says that a full investigation is needed into the issue.

“It is deeply worrying that these invoices show that a company which has received more than £9m from the Welsh Government was billed for more than £35,000 of gardening work carried out on a private home in England. We need a full explanation for what has happened.

“If another company has paid these bills, full documentation should be produced and an explanation offered. For a clerical error to have been repeated time and again over a period of two years is quite extraordinary.”

The Circuit of Wales continues to be the rights holders for MotoGP in the UK, but with construction originally scheduled to begin in 2013 still not underway, they have instead been forced to continue to hold the British Grand Prix at Silverstone.