Mike Todd
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Posts posted by Mike Todd
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The termination letter does seem quite measured in comparison to the site linking to it:-)
Anyone care to hazard a guess at how a marina near the River Soar would have reacted?
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I've been thinking about this "phoenix" company which a number here seen to regard as natural successors to QMP and I do entertain some question as to how this could happen. QMP own the site and this asset is pledged to the Steadmans as security against the original load made to QMP by them to set up the enterprise. As QMP are no more, either that title goes back to the Steadmans if the liquidator finds himself unable to sell the property for more than the outstanding debt or else the property is sold to some other third party for more than that outstanding debt which is then liquidated from the proceeds of the sale. In either event, it is unclear how the "phoenix" can acquire ownership of the site once held by QMP unless it can secure the means to purchase from some source or other. The normal sources of such finance would, I suspect, regard the notion of lending a substantial sum to an organisation whose sole director was a 20-year old law student with considerable disfavour. It is not inconceivable that the Steadmans, having been granted ownership of the site as a secured creditor might grant a new loan to the "phoenix" to allow the latter to purchase the site from them. It is not unlikely, however, that CRT would require rather more security from new company than they sought from the old particularly as they have already been burned for over £180,000.
There is no reason at all why the new company should not appoint other directors once its future is determined. It is, I believe, not all that unusual to have holding directors for a shell company as an interim measure (and so as not to disclose the real intentions?)
Not so. The fundamental difference with a limited company as opposed to a sole trader is that the former must file audited accounts at Companies House each financial year an those and must also submit Corporation Tax returns and, where appropriate, payroll details in respective of any remunerated employees including directors and details of any dividends paid to the shareholders. The audited accounts must be signed off as representing a "true and fair" view of the business.
Many apologies - I have reread your post and it is clear that your were referring only to VAT record keeping being little different between sole traders and limited liability companies. Sorry for the mistake.
There is a minimum level of turnover for an audit - below that it is an independent examination - which offers less protection to shareholders (if there are any independent ones).
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A big "IF" and another lawyers paradise. I am sure most boaters would not want CaRT spending money on this sort of legal action unless it was an open and shut case, which is very hard to establish. Even then there is the problem that, if an insurer was involved, and the tree was an obvious danger, the insurer is unlikely to indemnify, so insurance is mainly irrelevant.
Another thought. Local Authorities have the power to order cutting back of growth obstructing footways and the power to do the work and charge the property owner if he fails to act. I wonder if any of the canal construction acts included the provision that neighbouring property owners should not cause obstruction?
I did try to raise this proposal at the time when BW was being metamorphed into CRT but the unwillingness to engage in legislation seems to have ruled it out.
Still seems to me to be the way forward and worth campaigning for.
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As I understood it, the policy goes back to a time when the number of inline moorings was a very hot debate. Many boaters were berating BW (as it was then) about the problem of having to crawl past very long lines (over a mile in some cases) of moored botas, some of whose owners were not too thrilled at anyone going past them and made their views clear (LTRU!).
The policy of BW then introduced was to work towards a gradual reduction in the numbers although it was generally recognised that there were many obstacles. However, the link with marinas was one outcome and it also made the deal for new marina operators a tad more attractive as a business plan.
With one or two limited exceptions, marina operators believed - and still do despite the economic climate - that offering a better deal would attract business - a mooring in a marina with facilities (and good, pleasant, helpful staff) and no passing wash would be preferred to isolated bankside.
Although there are those that suggest that their preference is based on all sorts of factors, underneath I suspect that cost and proximity to transport are the biggest factors for those who are most attracted to bankside moorings.
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I see. If the mortgage to Steadman has been hoovering up all the cashflow provided by the part-filled marina mooring income, I can see how Paul Lillie gains the impression that that the NAA is iniquitous. I bet the mortgage rate was carefully calculated to suck up all the cash. I wonder if it is interest-only or if regular capital repayments were being made.
So the intention was that the NAA payments would be funded by the topslice income resulting from the last few spaces in the marina being filled, but they aren't, and CRT told him they would be! Hence the anger with CRT and it all being their fault that the NAA remains unpaid and PL considering them architects of their own misfortune.
This all fits in with a geezer who forgets to account for VAT on mooring income when preparing cashflow forecasts.
MtB
Was stamp duty paid on the leases? one wonders . . .
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I'm not even trying to open that debate again, and I'm certainly not condoning what Steadman/Lillie have done. I'm just saying, from a purely business standpoint, if the marina could avoid the NAA by digging a short channel to the Soar, it would be a good investment. I'm not commenting on the morality of the idea, merely the economics.
I agree with you 100%. Read my comment above.
AsI recall a marina on the K&A was built that way for just that reason. But entry/exit can be interesting, I believe, and probably currently not possible.
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I believe the self scouring argument is what the EA used as justification for not dredging them, now that they seem to be re-thinking that strategy perhaps provides the answer (though I too don't know for certain)
reading their booklet on the website it seems that the answer is both . . . depends on conditions and location. No single answer
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I must admit we feel the same, we would love to do it but we are 60ft also but we have yet to stump up the courage.
I also worry about what the ins. co. would say if the boat floundered in one of those short locks....
Not really too difficult - if you take it carefully. As it is a bit of an unusual lock operation it mnay be helpful to take with you the first time soneone who has already dont it, if only to save time working out the way for yourself. At times it is not immediately obvious but, like most things on the canal, works relaibly once learnt.
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Page 18 lists the transaction with the parent company (now CRT). It is not obvious from the limited detail that and NAA charges have been paid. However, as just said, it may be that none of the marinas is new enough to be covered - but it would still make a justifiable question for boater reps to pursue. (How old is Cowroast, the most recently acquired I think?)
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Just read the waterways world articles think Tim Coughlan's comments are more a moan about why there are more and more marinas making it more difficult to fill his I suspect. Done well with a good location/management both new and old marinas seem to be thriving examples would be perhaps Croperdy and Debdale underfunded or badly located marinas struggle Barby/Pillings.
I do have some sympathy that CRT operates marinas in direct competition as well as being in effect the landlord of the system. I wonder how independant the marina business actually is. Does it impact on the private operators is a relevant question.
As I recall it, he has opposed most of the new marinas at planning stage. He has made it clear that he does not think that competition is good (for him).
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not the best weather for fixing leaks take internal vent covers off and feel round roof hole and mushroom for water if all dry then do same with fire roof plate but don't get burnt after that are there any screws going through roof .then its window frames . good luck.Last year we had water coming in around a mushroom. When I got around to investigating it turned out that one of the four bolts holding it to the roof had fractured, allowing the thinnest of gaps around just a small part of the circumference to leak. It was enough! Replaced and re-sealed - problem solved!
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Eric Pickles has admitted the Government made a "mistake" in not dredging rivers to prevent flooding but blamed the Environment Agency for providing poor advice.
...I am really sorry that we took the advice ... we thought we were dealing with experts
So that's OK, we can now save even more money by sacking even more people with training and expertise as all that is needed to be known can be decided by politicians . And they are so much cheaper, as well know and some of them are even experts in moats - posh name for a drainage ditch.
We could even do away with universities as they clearly only teach people rubbish - come to that, let's send every child out to work as soon as it can hold a hammer, much better than schools, waste of time and money. And then we could sack Gove as being unnecessary. There, I told you it was good news.
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I think what prompted you to make the point originally was a picture of my partially submerged waterpoint which you reposted and commented on. While I do understand that there are regs, as I've pointed out several times, the fact that my water point has been submerged isn't actually any more relevant than it would be for any pipe to a house that goes underground. If the pipe has been damaged, contaminated and repaired further upstream then that will affect all the houses in the area too and if it's just a bit of river water that's got into the tap then it can simply be flushed out before connecting the hose.
Also I don't leave my hose connected to the waterpoint. I always flush it through before I fill the tank, but I don't think a hose can become "really contaminated" if it's just sitting in a dry locker?
It was not clear that ot was a personal waterpoint but even so my point was that hose pipes are sometimes (OK not by everyone) left connected with the tap on. Such pipes are inevitably more vulnerable that fixed supply lines.
MtB will be able to give a clearer steer on whether the regs require backflow protection further upstream when an exposed standpipe is installed eg at the 'mains' connection.
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But then we're going back to what I said earlier. Your example of the farmer back-syphoning cow slurry into a damaged water mains supply pipe has nothing to do with my tap being submerged and will affect all the houses around here just the same as it affects me. If it happened it wouldn't matter whether my tap was submerged or not and a non-backflow valve on my tap wouldn't make any difference.
Apart from the fact that, as MtB has said several times, the regs require backflow protection: (which was what led me to make the point originally)
Many water point taps have hoses (semi) permanently attached to them by eg liveaboards. Presumably they have some form of valve at the inboard end but not necessarily with back flow. If the hose becomes submerged then only the content of the hose is contaminated not the supply upstream of the tap.
Running water for a time when filling up tanks is recommended not for flushing the supply to the tap but the contents of the hosepipe which may have collected slightly contaminated water when left in the front locker (or wherever). If it had become really contaminated I don't think that flushing would be enough! Best buy a new one.
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That I can sort of understand, the company is obviously trying to give the customer who is not VAT registerd a better price from a company that doesn't have to charge VAT.
Who owns / runs the company doesn't really matter to the customer,that's for company & Her majesty to sort out.
Makes the accounting horrendous! (assuming that labour is correctly accounted)
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Dregding would be of considerable benefit as a deeper channel is going to help take more water away quicker.
At the same pressure a 4" pipe will carry more water than a 2" pipe.
Not putting huge swathes of concrete down would help - all the water that falls on cities goes down the drains and into the rivers, in previous times there would have been soil,trees and fields which would have absorbed the water.
Flooding is a man made 'disaster' and inevitable in our modern society - the best we can do is 'manage the risk' and be prepared to spend to achieve it
There some very interesting documents from EA which set out in detail the problems over dredging, which are much more complex than the cost. It is definitely not just a matter of seeing a river as a 2" pipe.
OTOH, they also confirm that some of the cause is long term land management - or lack of it.
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I'd be very surprised if it was as long as that
Richard
Right now it would take forever! Depends on how soon the boat needs to be moved. Can't see it this month.
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It makes sense from a "licence relates to usage" point of view (ie,the boat owner's side of the argument) but the problem is, there's a lot of boats which would do this and then CRT would be seriously out-of-pocket. The result would be massively increased licence fees for those who do stay on the canals, eg online moorings and CCers.
Or we could go back to paying a fee at every lock or toll point with each boat marked to indicate its dimensions and draft etc. This would clearly make a major dent in the unemployment statistics.
Or perhaps we should adopt the suggestion on another thread that each boat is required to have a kind of tachograph or one of the devices to monitor car usage for young drivers and pay by the lock-mile.
Or we could just stay with something simple and cost-effective.
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Have you lost interest in this thread, Mike?
Not at all - thanks for all the information but I do not have any personal knowledge to share. That was why I was asking!
If the Thames continues to be on red boards at the end of the month then it may well be that we come up the Lee and Stort as an alternative until passage to the K&A is possible. If there is time then we will take a closer look locally and will report back anything interesting we discover.
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I've posted this response from Sarina in Customer Services at Canal & River Trust. I hope it clarifies some queries expressed in this thread.
Hello Alan,
A colleague of mine alerted me to your thread on Canalworld discussion forum today about our notices site. I hope you don’t mind me writing to you directly but it’s something I’ve been personally involved in so I’m naturally quite passionate about it!
You’re all right, the detail in bold at the top of the notice e-mail alert is automated text. It’s extracted from the location data that the waterway team enters when they create the notice.
The “Location 42” related to the ‘functional location’ (FL) information for the start and end points of the stoppage. It’s not exciting, or particularly technical, but essentially every km length, bridge, lock, culvert, weir, sanitary station etc. has an associated FL.
As you rightly deduced, each FL is written in the following way AA-012-345. AA will be a unique reference for each waterway, 012 relates to the relevant km of that waterway and 345 will define the structure or ‘asset’ within that km. The reason it displayed in this particular notice is because of that very annoying thing none of us can completely eliminate…human error. Instead of choosing a specific location on the 42nd km length of the Oxford canal, they chose the whole km. To prevent this happening again we (actually, not me, but colleagues who are more IT literate) are in the process of stopping this being possible.
Having now spoken to the South East office I understand that they’re currently under extreme pressure. They have numerous incidents of flooding across their waterways and simply wanted to make sure that you were all provided with some warning and information about the present situation in this area. I hope you’ll agree that the content of the notice is clear and helpful.
All that aside, you were right to voice your annoyance. “Oxford Canal – 042” is meaningless, irrelevant and potentially confusing information for you and I’m sorry that it slipped past us and out into general circulation.
I also see that “john6767” mentions the difficulties we’ve experienced in offering a twitter feed of these notices. Being limited to only 140 characters whilst also including a link to the actual notice is the biggest limiting factor in being able to provide something immediately understandable. Since releasing the notices site and the Twitter feed I’d say that we’ve tweaked the Twitter feed so many times that I’ve lost count! We’ve fine-tuned them now to include:
- whether the notice is new or an update
- the date(s) the notice applies
- the navigation
- the nature of the notice (i.e. Navigation restriction/navigation closure/Advice/Towpath Closure etc.)
That’s pretty much all we can squeeze onto these Tweets.
Some of the changes we’ve made have happened quite recently so I’d be really grateful (if he’s interested) if “john6767” would have a look at the Twitter feed and let me know what he thinks?
I also see that “nicknorman” has realised that some of the Tweets which we’re, in fact, updates to tell you that a closed navigation was now open still displayed ‘navigation closed’ in the Tweet. We spotted this too some time ago. To stop this from happening I’ve asked all my colleagues in the waterways to also update the notice type. It’s something different for them to do and most people are remembering but there’s still the possibility for error. If any of you spot them then you can let me know (@CRTSarina) and I’ll send a reminder round.
In fact, We’d be really grateful for all your feedback on any part of the new notices system. If you’d like to send it to me (Sarina.young@canalrivertrust.org.uk), I’ll share it with my colleagues and we’ll see what we can do.
It’s new and there are still some changes that we’re making to it (even as I write this e-mail) but we are keen to get it right – so please don’t feel as though you’d be wasting your time.
Kindest regards,
Sarina Young
Customer Service Co-Ordinator
Sarina should be thanked for taking the time and effort to explain at such length - interesting as well!
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No he doesn't. The original NAA was cancelled, therefore the old company has nothing to transfer to the new one.
That's why Paul Lillie says "this new company has today written to the New Marinas Unit at Canal & Rivers Trust stating that it agrees in principle to starting a new Canal Access Agreement..."
But it is not a new marina!
Perhaps the letter will come back 'not known at this address'
I'm not talking about the defunct NAA
I'm talking about the fact that there is another agreement between the landowner and BW/CRT that stipulates that they will enter into a NAA, subject to certain conditions.
If that agreement wasn't in place, who would invest in building a marina?
And they did enter into NAA agreement.Doesn't mean they have to keep on doing it . . .
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So you think everybody can predict exactly how the economy will be doing in two years time?
No - your business plan has to be sufficiently resilient to cope with changes in market conditions whenever they occur. If they then go outside the envelope of your provisions then you wil go bust!
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Somewhere back in this thread it was mentioned that Paul Lillie was given the opportunity to reduce the number of available moorings, but that he refused to do so. I seem to remember reading on one of the CRT contracts that was posted here that every year the marina operator had to tell CRT how many slips would be available for the coming year. It seems like CRT has given marina operators a pretty good opportunity to manipulate maximum occupancy from one year to the next. One can only wonder why Paul Lillie didn't take advantage of this.
It does seem like the CRT system of assessing fees could use some fine tuning. Their system seems to be premised on them being able to force a certain number of people into marinas by limiting on line moorings, but that premise overlooks the fact that some people don't want to be moored in a marina. It makes sense that CRT would want to replace the income it loses from removing on line moorings, but maybe they should remove the online moorings in conjunction with marina owners actually paying the NAA fees, rather than in anticipation of them paying the fees.
Having a little flexibility in the system would probably be good for everyone involved. If a marina got off to a shaky start, it would allow CRT to be flexible about what percentage of occupancy they applied their fees to, making the fees closer to the reality of the occupancy. Having a set fee based on 100% occupancy really isn't a great plan from any respect. CRT should simply change the formula for how many moorings it abandons and change how it assesses the fees on marinas - 100% occupancy just isn't realistic.
IMHO
Most businesses will provide a degree of flexibility to a valued customer (other than in mass market situations). In this case it seems that the customer never reached the valued status, having put off paying anything so far.
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It does, as I know some who do and that have received calls from CRT. They flip between 2-3 visitor moorings within a half mile for months and are rarely if at all visit their home mooring.
I thought that the concerns were
(a) that multiple boats might cite the same mooring
(
people might get a home mooring in a cheap location and they stay long term elsewhere, hoping to stay below the radar because they have a registered home mooringbut there may be other issues as well.
not the best weather for fixing leaks take internal vent covers off and feel round roof hole and mushroom for water if all dry then do same with fire roof plate but don't get burnt after that are there any screws going through roof .then its window frames . good luck.
people might get a home mooring in a cheap location and they stay long term elsewhere, hoping to stay below the radar because they have a registered home mooring
Another eviction
in General Boating
Posted
No-one did suggest he had mental health problems - that was the other case.