Dispute at Pillings

[LoneWolf]

Welcome to the forum sianimelyn

 

someone posted this communication they had received from CaRT earlier which may be useful

 

******************

Dear Boat Licence Customer

Following my letter of last week explaining the unfortunate circumstances which have arisen in respect of Pillings Lock Marina, I have heard from a number of you and I would like to thank you for contacting me. I am very appreciative of the understanding of the Trust's position expressed by many of those with whom I have spoken. This second communication is in response to some of the issues that have been raised.

Since sending my letter we have received this week a letter and formal notice of a meeting of creditors confirming that the Directors of Quorn Marina Properties Limited ("QMP") have decided to place the company in Creditors' Voluntary Liquidation. The meeting will take place on 3 February 2014 and a representative of the Trust will be attending. We hope that by attending we will be in a better position to understand the financial difficulties QMP has faced and why it was unable to meet its contractual obligations to the Trust. Until we have attended the meeting we have no way of knowing the intentions of the liquidator and, therefore, what this means for the future of the Marina.

What I can however confirm is that it is not currently the Trust's intention, in light of the latest action by QMP, to alter the timescales for taking action to sever the connection between the Marina and the waterway - that is if the Marina owner does not sever the connection by 12 April 2014 then CRT will take action to do so. We do very much hope however that no such action will be forced upon us.

The issue of boat licences has also been a concern to some and I hope the following provides some clarity on this issue. It was a condition of the Network Access Agreement ("NAA") that QMP ensured that all boats in the Marina held a valid CRT boat licence. Now that we have revoked that agreement, this obligation has fallen away, however, boats that do come out of the Marina are required to hold a valid licence and, clearly, any unlicensed craft using the waterway will be liable to enforcement action in the normal way. We very much hope that we can rely upon your co-operation in this respect.

I am sorry that at present there remains a lot of uncertainty for you but we will try and keep you informed of developments over the coming weeks. It is our sincere hope, before we are forced to sever the Marina from the waterway, that we will be able to conclude a new standard NAA with those who eventually have ownership and control of the Marina, and that they will be committed to complying with its terms and conditions in the future.

Please be assured that the Trust is very sympathetic to the position in which you now find yourselves and we will always have regard to your interests in so far as we are able in deciding our future actions.

Please feel free to email me or call me on either of the numbers shown below.

 

Yours sincerely

 

Phil Spencer

Head of Business Boating

***********************

 

 

If i were you i'd contact CaRT and ask to be kept informed (as PLM dont seem to be informing you) and be ready to get your boat out before they block the entrance

[RetiredLady]

 

Sorry I haven't replied sooner to all the nice welcoming posts on here, it has just taken so long to catch up with everything.

 

 

Unless PLM goes into liquidation too, then any over payment outside of the notice period should be refunded without a problem.

 

I really hope I'm right about this situation.

 

RL

 

Should be refunded by whom??

 

Pillings lock marina Ltd, should and from what I have seen before, will refund payment.

 

RL

[Roxy]

 

 

There has been a few boats gone from the Cranfleet cut over the past yrs - rumoured due to licence enforcement.

Should pay there licence fee's then like the rest of us...

[steven wilkinson]

I will give it a go!

 

• The company owning the marina signed an access agreement prior to the marina opening that allowed access to CRT waters which called for the marina owners to pay an annual fee to CRT.
• Moorers such as yourselves have paid their own mooring fees to the operator of the marina.
• The fees then due to CRT from the marina owners have not been paid.
• CRT have gone to court over the unpaid fees. They are now owed £180,000. CRT won.
• CRT have instructed that the access to their waters be stopped up - and if the marina doesn't do it, they will (in April)
• In response to losing the case, the company owning the marina put its-self into liquidation.

There is no way I can offer advice on what you should do. You have to find out what happens next, and make your own informed decisions. There is a creditors meeting in early Feb. (From the comfort of my living room (so I am happy to be corrected by more knowledgeable people), the way the companies were set up, I don't think you are a creditor, as your dealings were with Pillings Lock Ltd, and they are still operational. Pillings Lock Ltd will be a creditor of the liquidated company)

[sianimelyn]

Thank you lone wolf. I will contact them

[Tam & Di]

My 1st instinct is to get out of there fast, but there are no moorings available locally, so wonder whether others have beaten us to it.

 

 

Surely it must indicate something that there are no moorings available locally, taken in conjunction with Pillings apparently not having sufficient moorers to pay its way?

[boathunter]

It seems to me that carts 1 in 10 policy would have led to a 10% charge. I imagine this was then reduced by negotiation to 9% to represent 90% ocupancy as being more realistic.

 

Maybe PL could pull out some of his pontoons and sell them to Barby. This would both reduce the future fees and help a fellow struggling marina.

[Roxy]

Pillings lock marina Ltd, should and from what I have seen before, will refund payment.

 

RL

But they have no money? they can't even afford to pay C&RT the money they owe them? Not arguing with you RL just curious that's all, shame PL junior isn't no where to be seen or give his half of the story like he did from the start of this thread

[Stilllearning]

 

Surely it must indicate something that there are no moorings available locally, taken in conjunction with Pillings apparently not having sufficient moorers to pay its way?

Somewhere on this thread it was stated that there are vacancies at Sawley.

[steven wilkinson]

PL has just posted his side of the story on the 'NAA' thread.

[Willber G]

Interesting post from Paul Lillie on the other thread:

http://www.canalworld.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=63446&page=11#entry1223491

Edited January 26, 2014 by Willber G

[carpet wallah]

But they have no money? they can't even afford to pay C&RT the money they owe them? Not arguing with you RL just curious that's all, shame PL junior isn't no where to be seen or give his half of the story like he did from the start of this thread

PLM don't, technically, owe any money to CaRT. The money is owed by QMP. Mind you, any odds on getting a refund from PLM ????

[benfordboy]

Should pay there licence fee's then like the rest of us...

 

Of course - My comment was purely related to the removal of Online Moorings in the Soar Vacinity.

[Ally]

Roxy, you are confusing plm and qmp, both connected, but the actual debt lay with qmp.

[davidc]

Funny but he was the King of England

 

actually

quote

Cnut the Great, more commonly known as Canute, was a king of Denmark, England, Norway, and parts of Sweden, together often referred to as the Anglo-Scandinavian or North Sea Empire. Wikipedia

unquote

and laid down one of our most important principle of law that "No one is above the law not even the King"

[mayalld]

I've tried to be quite upfront about the fact that I know nothing about UK law.

 

I would posit, though, that the planning/zoning/subdivision processes are quite similar in most industrialized nations. The whole process of land use and development, as tedious as it might be, is a quite logical process and there isn't whole lot of reason that it would vary much from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

The point is that the processes are not actually similar, as we saw when you offered an opinion on it being impossible to register unusable pockets of land.

So my daughter's mama has lost out then, as many others that moor there no doubt.....thanks PL! She's worked hard to live her dream and now you've destroyed it

 

However as a wannabe liveaboard, I have no credit card and want to be based in a marina how to I go about payment of my moorings? and if they go bust having paid in advance is there anyway I can claim my monies back?

The situation is more complex than you set out.

 

However, in general, if you pay money to a company that folds, you can't claim back any money, because the company doesn't have the money to give you back

[dor]

Does the practice of removing 1 on-line mooring for every 10 marina moorings apply specifically to the locality of the new marina ?

 

I cannot think of any on-line moorings removed off the River Soar since PLM was built apart from those at the top of Ratcliffe lock that were relocated not removed to below the lock after bad flooding.

 

There has been a few boats gone from the Cranfleet cut over the past yrs - rumoured due to licence enforcement.

I recall that BW allowed a 30 mile radius when relating on-line moorings to a marina. I have seen a document that listed all the on-line moorings removed and detailing which marina they related to. One marina may have had moorings removed from 10 or more on-line mooring sites.

[SoosieQ]

It seems to me that carts 1 in 10 policy would have led to a 10% charge. I imagine this was then reduced by negotiation to 9% to represent 90% ocupancy as being more realistic.

 

Maybe PL could pull out some of his pontoons and sell them to Barby. This would both reduce the future fees and help a fellow struggling marina.

As per my first post on this thread......pillings plans and pillings site as it currently is. There is an additional pontoon. Pontoon C is not on the plan.....it is clearly there on the aerial view...so he has additional berths to those that CRT are using to calculate the 9%..... Unless people are moored there for free thats more income to the marina than he allowed for......so why can he not pay what he owes?

[Willber G]

As per my first post on this thread......pillings plans and pillings site as it currently is. There is an additional pontoon. Pontoon C is not on the plan.....it is clearly there on the aerial view...so he has additional berths to those that CRT are using to calculate the 9%..... Unless people are moored there for free thats more income to the marina than he allowed for......so why can he not pay what he owes?

It is stated in the link I posted earlier that BW/CRT did six-monthly inspections of the berths.

[SoosieQ]

It is stated in the link I posted earlier that BW/CRT did six-monthly inspections of the berths.

My apologies Wilber G, it just boggles me that a marina that clearly has more than 50% occupancy is unwilling to pay what it agreed to. I see that certain peoples lifestyles havent suffered as a result of reduced income....still taking foreign holidays and new homes and cars.

[Neil2]

Interesting post from Paul Lillie on the other thread:

http://www.canalworld.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=63446&page=11#entry1223491

I can't imagine many people who run their own business having much sympathy with that.

 

I'm sure there are thousands of business people over the last few years who would love to have gone to their local authority and negotiated a reduction in their business rates because their turnover has reduced. You just can't make up the rules as you go along, no more than you can control all the variables involved in running a business. At least with things like rates and NAA's there is an element of certainty unlike fuel costs for example.

 

QMP knew the score when they agreed the terms of the NAA, who is to decide who's fault it is that they haven't made enough money?

 

QMP should really be asking why other similar developments nearby have found a healthy demand when there are rows of empty berths at Pillings Lock.

Edited January 26, 2014 by Neil2

[Willber G]

I can't imagine many people who run their own business having much sympathy with that.

 

I'm sure there are thousands of business people over the last few years who would love to have gone to their local authority and negotiated a reduction in their business rates because their turnover has reduced. You just can't make up the rules as you go along, no more than you can control all the variables involved in running a business. At least with things like rates and NAA's there is an element of certainty unlike fuel costs for example.

 

QMP knew the score when they agreed the terms of the NAA, who is to decide who's fault it is that they haven't made enough money?

 

QMP should really be asking why other similar developments nearby have found a healthy demand when there are rows of empty berths at Pillings Lock.

I don't disagree with you, I just thought the link would be of interest to people on this thread.

[Roxy]

The point is that the processes are not actually similar, as we saw when you offered an opinion on it being impossible to register unusable pockets of land.

 

The situation is more complex than you set out.

 

However, in general, if you pay money to a company that folds, you can't claim back any money, because the company doesn't have the money to give you back

Thought so just needed a second opinion thankyou mayalld

[sociable_hermit]

QMP knew the score when they agreed the terms of the NAA, who is to decide who's fault it is that they haven't made enough money?

 

QMP should really be asking why other similar developments nearby have found a healthy demand when there are rows of empty berths at Pillings Lock.

 

Quite. I think most other Marinas in the area ARE oversubscribed, mainly because they're full of ex-Pillings Lock boaters.

[DeanS]

I posted this on the other thread.

 

I dont know the marina layout, but there must be a simple way of blocking off a certain set of pontoons, rendering them excluded from the NAA, without much cost. Chains across the entrance for example. or simply disconnecting the water and elec, and putting up "visitor berth" signs. I'm sure CRT would have allowed some means of dropping the NAA with some creative thinking like this, rather than insisting the entire pontoon be removed. Maybe I am just daft.

 

I guess I'll stay on this thread from now on...;-)