By Neil Mackay

THE American tycoon Donald Trump is to receive free land worth an estimated £5 million from Aberdeenshire Council in a move that has been damned as a taxpayer funded sweetener.

The US developer wants to build a £1 billion luxury golfing resort at the Menie estate at Balmedie in Aberdeenshire. The public inquiry into the plans is expected to wrap up this week. Once it is complete the Scottish government can still order that the development does not go ahead.

Paul Johnston, the Lib-Dem councillor who represents the area in which Trump wants to build his resort, says Aberdeenshire Council has a policy of demanding that builders and developers provide some affordable housing - cheap houses for low income families - in return for being granted permission to work on major developments in the area.

The developers are required to provide the land and arrange for the building of the cheap housing. However, an official council document passed to the Sunday Herald shows that the local authority is going to gift the land build the cheap housing tto Trump so he can build 98 cheap homes.

Additionally, the council is to allow Trump to build an extra 52 "open market" homes - houses available on the mortgage market to buyers - on the free land.

Trump's primary development - the luxury golfing resort - will involve golf courses, a five-star hotel, 950 holiday homes, 500 upmarket houses and 36 golf villas. The council document states that the affordable housing site will be a "site or sites within Balmedie to be provided by the Council or a body nominated by the Council".

The value of the free land to be given to Trump comes in at about £5m. A similar stretch of land nearby in Chapelwell that had 150 housing units built on it sold for £2m five years ago.

Johnston said: "the Council is providing Mr Trump with £5m worth of land. People can try and spin this to sound as if he is providing 100 affordable houses to the people of Aberdeenshire, but that is not the case. We have to give him the land first. The Council could have built these homes on its own land. He has also been given land to build 52 houses of his own that he can sell."

Johnston said that Trump would be able to lower the costs of building his luxury golfing resort by bundling the development together with the affordable housing he is required to build. The Councillor also pointed out that the likely location of the cheap housing would overlook a rubbish tip.

"The consequence of this is that Mr Trump's luxury homes will be beside a hotel and a golf course, and the homes for poorer members of the community will have an open vista onto a pile of industrial waste."

The decision to gift the land to Trump was made in secret by Council officers who have the power to cut such deals - known as Section 75 agreements - without oversight from elected councillors. Even the precise location of the land is being kept secret. The document revealing the land handover only came to light as part of the ongoing public inquiry.

"We are giving land worth millions without any councillor approving it," said Johnston. "Is this best value for the electorate? Councillors cannot stop this happening. To me, this looks pretty much like a sweetener. Openness and transparency are needed in this sort of process. The Council has the power to do what it is doing, but whether it is the right thing to do is a completely different matter.

"Is this the right thing to do to hand Donald Trump a public subsidy to add to his profit? No. It is not. It is shocking. Council officials are dispensing assets worth millions. There is something wrong here. I think this is a pact with the devil."

Councillor Debra Storr, another Lib-Dem opponent of the Trump plans, said: "under normal circumstances, if we ask someone to provide affordable housing, they supply the land. In this case, we are supplying the land at no cost to Trump. It is land owned by the people. If we sold it, I believe we could get £5m for it.

"The Council has decided that rather than sell it, it is just going to give it to Trump. It appears that the Council is bending over backwards to facilitate this deal in a way I have never seen before. We are charged to achieve best value and this does not demonstrate best value. It doesn't seem to me to be a sensible use of resources to give land over without ensuring there is a significant public benefit."

Alistair Stark, former convenor of the Royal Town Planning Institute in Scotland and a planner who worked with Aberdeenshire Council until 2000, said: "it is vital for the integrity of the planning system that everything is in the open and above board. There must be no suspicion of back-room deals and this has the potential to smack of back-room deals."

George Sorial of the Trump Organisation said: "the Council identified to us the land where it wished the affordable housing to be built and we have worked with them to make that an integral part of an overall project that features many millions of pounds of investment by us. It is absurd to view the arrangement as some kind of inducement and it's important to stress that we're still discussing the details of that arrangement with the Council.

"The ongoing public inquiry is examining every aspect of this development in detail and those councillors opposing it should really be focusing on the inquiry and respecting its processes. They could have raised this at the inquiry and it is disgraceful they did not do so, presumably to avoid it being subject to cross-examination. They have no understanding of real estate development."