Corby Tesco Extra sold for £47m - netting owners a £4m profit in just seven years

A Corby supermarket has changed hands for an astonishing £47m.

Tesco Extra in St Mark's Road has been sold by private equity investor Henley and investment manager Aprirose seven years after they paid £43m for it.

The supermarket giant still has 18 years left of its 25-year lease on the site, for which it pays £2.55m per year.

The land, a former ironstone quarry, was handed to Corby Council by the Commission for New Towns in the 1980s as part of the bid to find a new future for the town after the closure of British Steel.

The authority sold the freehold in 2010 to Greatline Developments - now Mulberry Commercial Developments - for just £82,000. That sale was the subject of an external audit by KPMG and a lengthy police investigation. Although the police investigation was dropped, KPMG found issues with the sale and development of several pieces of land including the Tesco site, Rockingham Triangle, Lincoln Way and the Cube overspend.

Their investigation led to the early retirement of former Chief Executive Chris Mallender. Claims of bullying by whistleblower and former head of housing Steven Redfern, reached an out-of-court settlement with the authority after he claimed in 2015 he was bullied to the brink of suicide after raising problems with the way the council had dealt with the projects.

In 2013, after the Tesco building was complete, the land was sold by Mulberry - who are undertaking a major development in George Street as well as the town's biggest warehouse sites on the edge of the A43 - to offshore company Renduki for £43m.

Now it has emerged that it has been sold on to a private investor for £47m - netting Renduki £4m.