Leas Pavilion Developer Insolvency: How Offshore Owner Mylecke NV Left Folkestone with Eyesore Towers and Broken Promises
For 18 months the two stark concrete towers on Folkestone’s Leas have stood frozen – an unfinished gateway to a luxury apartment scheme that never arrived.
In early September, Belgian developer Mylecke NV broke months of silence to reassure residents via KentOnline that the Leas Pavilion project would finally restart “within the next three months”, with financing said to be close to resolution.
But new documents filed at Companies House tell a very different story. A year after receivers were appointed over the company behind the scheme, the official receipts-and-payments account shows not a single penny of income or expenditure.
Set alongside detailed investigations by The Shepway Vox Team, and the revelation that a director linked to Mylecke NV is named in the ICIJ’s Paradise Papers leak, the September pledge begins to look less like a fresh start and more like another chapter in a long-running saga of delay, debt and offshore complexity.
The September Promise: Work Would Begin The Next Three Months
On 3 September 2025, KentOnline reported that Mylecke NV – which took control of the Leas Pavilion scheme in September 2024 – had apologised to neighbours and insisted construction would get going again. Financing, a spokesperson said, was being finalised; work was expected to restart within three months.
The article accepted that:
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Work had slowed between October 2023 and February 2024 while a new sprinkler system was installed.
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Construction then stopped completely in April 2024.
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Since then, nothing has moved on the site other than the removal of the crane in October 2024, leaving two unfinished stair cores looming over The Leas and widely branded an “eyesore”.
Despite that bleak backdrop, Mylecke’s message was upbeat: the loan was almost in place, the past would soon be “behind us”, and the scheme would become “something truly positive for the town”.
Campaigners from the Friends of the Leas Pavilion group said they had been reassured by those assurances, even if their patience was wearing thin after repeated delays.
What the September piece did not spell out, however, was just how deep the project’s financial hole had become – or how little room for manoeuvre remained.
Behind The Words: A Company Already In Receivership
The September reassurance came almost a year after Leas Pavilion Development Ltd – the company that owns the site – had been placed into receivership.
Companies House records show that:
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The company was incorporated in November 2020 to deliver the 91-flat, nine-storey redevelopment of the former Leas Pavilion.
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Belgian vehicle Mylecke NV became both a director and a person with significant control in February 2021, holding between 25% and 50% of the shares and voting rights.
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The development was heavily leveraged. Charges filed at Companies House record a first loan from Octopus Real Estate S.à r.l. in April 2022 (since repaid), and a second, still-outstanding charge in favour of Tab Acm Limited, created in December 2022 and secured on the freehold of 7–8 The Leas and the surrounding land.
In October 2024, Tab Acm appointed two receivers from FRP Advisory Trading Ltd – Paul Atkinson and Benjamin Hubbard – under a Law of Property Act (LPA) receivership.
As ShepwayVox has documented, the company’s own 2021–22 accounts already painted a picture of a scheme buckling under its debt:
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Net liabilities ballooned from £1.68m in 2021 to £4.46m in 2022 – a 166% increase.
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Short-term creditors jumped from £1.5m to £6.5m, while long-term creditors rose to over £10.6m.
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Losses deepened to £4.46m in 2022, with the company dependent on director support and related-party loans to survive.
By the time those 2022 accounts were filed at Companies House on 31 August 2023, ShepwayVox argues, “the fate of the Leas Pavilion development had already been sealed”.
In other words, when Mylecke told KentOnline in September 2025 that work would soon restart, it was speaking as the controlling shareholder of a company that had been in receivership since Oct 2024, after a long period of financial distress.
A Blank Balance Sheet: A Year Of Receivership With “NIL” Receipts & Payments
The most striking new piece of evidence is the document – a REC2 notice of summary of receipts and payments for Leas Pavilion Development Ltd, filed at Companies House by FRP Advisory.
The form confirms that:
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The company is in “LPA Receivership”.
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Joint receiver Ben Hubbard (on behalf of FRP) is reporting for the period 31 October 2024 to 30 October 2025.
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The “Joint Receivers’ Summary of Receipts & Payments” shows NIL receipts and NIL payments, with the position “represented by NIL”.
In plain English: over twelve months of receivership, no money has come into the receiver’s account and none has gone out.
That does not prove that no invoices have been argued over or no negotiations held behind the scenes. Receivers can spend time exploring options before committing to a disposal or refinancing. But it does show that:
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There has been no recorded income from selling or renting any part of the site.
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No funds have been paid out towards construction, professional fees or investor distributions via the receiver’s statutory account for that year.
Set against a public promise that “work should begin within the next three months”, the statutory reality is stark: as of the end of October 2025, the receivers’ books remain a blank page.
For local residents staring at two stranded concrete cores, that chasm between PR and paperwork will feel depressingly familiar.
Offshore Ownership & Paradise Papers Connection
The financial fog around the Leas Pavilion scheme is compounded by its offshore and cross-border ownership structure.
Companies House confirms that Mylecke NV – a Belgian public limited liability company – is both a director and the current person with significant control of Leas Pavilion Development Ltd.
Mylecke is not a tiny shell. Belgian corporate and investment documents describe it as a holding company with stakes in multiple real-estate and financial ventures, including projects marketed to retail investors via crowdfunding platforms.
One of the key figures associated with Mylecke is Belgian property investor Hendrik Danneels (pictured). He appears publicly as:
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The permanent representative of Mylecke NV on the board and committees of listed Belgian real-estate group Banimmo.
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The owner or director of a web of companies active in property development and investment across Belgium and beyond.
Crucially for Folkestone, ShepwayVox has unearthed that Danneels is named in the Paradise Papers, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ (ICIJ) offshore leaks project based on Malta’s corporate registry. The leak links him to Belmor Limited, a Malta-registered company.
The Paradise Papers are part of the same family of ICIJ investigations as the Panama Papers, shining a spotlight on how wealthy individuals and corporations use low-tax jurisdictions and opaque structures. Being named in them does not, by itself, prove wrongdoing. But it does underline that the senior figures behind Mylecke are comfortable operating in complex offshore environments.
In a March 2025 analysis of the Leas Pavilion saga, ShepwayVox put it bluntly, concluding that:
“Ultimately, the responsibility for LPD Ltd’s collapse lies with Mylecke NV; one of whose directors is named in the Paradise Papers.”
For a town that has watched a Grade II-listed pavilion demolished on the promise of a high-end rebuild, the revelation that the controlling shareholder is associated with offshore secrecy will do nothing to rebuild trust.
“Complete Shock” Or Entirely Predictable
This is not the first time Mylecke’s public statements have clashed with the paper trail.
In March 2025, KentOnline reported that the entire Leas Pavilion development had been quietly listed for sale on Rightmove, marketed by Savills (since removed) with “price on application”, even as the concrete shells stood unfinished. Mylecke told the paper it was “just as surprised as you are”, insisting it had agreements in place to repay the existing bridge loan and a fund “ready to cover the full development”.
Yet ShepwayVox meticulously traced the sequence of loans and charges and concluded that Mylecke could hardly have been blindsided. The site had been heavily mortgaged, the Tab Acm charge remained outstanding, and the company’s accounts pointed towards inevitable insolvency.
Their verdict on Mylecke’s professed astonishment was scathing:
“It should come as no surprise to Mylecke NV, the site is for sale. And their claim of being ‘completely shocked’ should be taken with a pinch of salt, considering their central role in the project’s financial mismanagement.”
Taken together with the receivers’ empty receipts-and-payments account, the September 2025 promise that everything is almost in place for work to restart looks less like a firm commitment and more like another attempt to calm public concern while the underlying problems remain unresolved.
A Town Left With Towers & Questions
None of this is the fault of local residents or the Friends of the Leas Pavilion, who have campaigned for years to see the Edwardian building restored and re-used. Many backed the controversial flats scheme as the only realistic way of saving what remained of the pavilion’s frontage.
Instead of a restored landmark, Folkestone has:
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A prominent seafront site dominated by two raw concrete cores and hoardings.
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A development vehicle in receivership, with multi-million-pound debts and no recorded financial activity through the receiver’s account over a full year.
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A controlling shareholder whose representative has been named in global offshore leaks and whose public reassurances have repeatedly been undermined by subsequent events.
For the council and local politicians, the case raises uncomfortable questions about due diligence, risk assessment and the reliance on lightly-capitalised special-purpose vehicles backed by opaque international investors to deliver critical heritage projects.
What Happens Next
Legally, the initiative now sits with the receivers, acting on behalf of the secured lender. They can:
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Sell the site, with planning permission attached, to a new developer.
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Seek to refinance the scheme if a credible funder appears.
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In extremis, realise the value of the land in other ways if the current scheme is no longer viable.
Politically and democratically, though, the pressure is closer to home. Residents are entitled to clear answers on:
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Whether genuine, fully-funded plans exist to restart construction – and if so, by whom.
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What safeguards Folkestone & Hythe District Council will put in place before backing any new iteration of the scheme.
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How the public can be kept informed, rather than learning about Rightmove listings and receivership appointments after the fact.
Until those questions are answered, the two silent towers on The Leas will continue to stand as concrete evidence that glossy CGI images and warm words are not the same as money in the bank – and that, for now at least, the September pledge that work would restart “soon” rings painfully hollow.
The Shepway Vox Team
Discernibly Different Dissent
The Friends of the Pavilion were central in righteously demanding a completely unrealistic level of investment in the pavilion without any regard to how it was to be funded. They pressured the local council into a wish-list works notice and then approving a scheme that was oversized to try and recoup the £5m required to cover the renovation of the pavilion, even though the developer’s own calculations showed the scheme to be unprofitable from the start. There should be no surprise that this group of do-gooders actually contributed to the destruction of the thing they were trying to save, blinded by uncompromising hubris and leaving the local inhabitants with the worst outcome possible.
Spot on.