Category Archives: The Chugger

Our fine local do-gooders

HORSEWORLD PLANNING APPS WITHDRAWN AT 11TH HOUR!

Web ExclusiveFollowing a tip-off last night The BRISTOLIAN can report that the ‘interestingly’ managed charity HorseWorld will not be seeing its planning applications for a massive housing development and new visitor centre go before the BANES Development Control Committee today – thanks to the sensational LAST MINUTE DUMPING of the matter from the agenda.

Bath & North East Somerset Council’s DCC is still meeting this afternoon… Only without any discussion of the controversial concrete-in-the-greenbelt scheme that HorseWorld boss Mark ‘Am I In This Month’s BRISTOLIAN Again?’ Owen seems to think is the only way to reverse the financial rot that set in during his five year tenure as Managing Director.

A council source told The BRISTOLIAN:

The applications have been withdrawn – this was done by officers not the applicant. There is further information to be obtained, and issues to be clarified…

Just what could that “further information” be? What “issues” need to be “clarified”? Could it be that the recent revelations in your lovable ‘Smiter’ have been read down yonder..?

It’s expected that Owen’s DOOMED PLANS will be resubmitted to next month’s DCC meeting on 20 November.

In the meantime, questions continue to be asked about a number of aspects to Owen’s development proposals, not least the ‘SECTION 106 CONTRIBUTIONS’.

‘Section 106’ obligations are legally enforceable requirements on a piece of land that a local authority negotiates with an owner. When major development like what’s planned for the HorseWorld land is in the pipeline, it’s meant to ensure that the developer bears some of the financial strain on local services, such as education, roads and health facilities.

And as you can imagine, 125 new houses in a village of barely more than 1,300 people can definitely be seen as major.

So given the FINANCIAL STRAITS that HorseWorld is in, offering £1,008,254.52 in s106 money (‘HorseWorld Trust Financial Viability Statement’) seems pretty impressive (though as some have noted, s106 negotiations are often skewed in favour of the developer).

Certainly, as some of the submissions in support of HorseWorld’s plans suggest, more housing for local people – something of a hot local potato at the moment – would be a great idea.

As HorseWorld marketing assistant Amy Williams noted (whilst simultaneously forgetting to mention who she’s employed by):

Housing is very much needed in the area and will allow the existing listed buildings to be converted and preserved. The site for the housing fits inperfectly with the existing built up area surrounding it. Well done HorseWorld for a well thought out plan!

Well done indeed! And well done Amy for describing so well the need for affordable housing for Whitchurch locals whilst she herself lives in a £200,000+ house in, err, Staple Hill!

Amy’s boss, Communications Manager Samantha Greatbanks – an actual Whitchurch resident – echoes the sentiment:

I feel that for my generation these houses will provide a new place to live that is close to home.

Admirable sentiments from someone living in a half-a-million quid property!

Still, it will be great that with 125 new homes in Whitchurch young locals not born with a silver spoon in their mouth will be able to find homes in their own village and not be forced out by stupidly high house prices, isn’t it?

Erm… Well it seems that HorseWorld isn’t that keen on the idea. Its million pound s106 offer is only on the table if it’s allowed to provide just 10% affordable housing on the site – a mere dozen homes for ordinary Whitchurch people.

That’s contrasted with the not-much-less-meagre demand – carried unanimously – of the BANES Development Control Committee for 35%.

And when you consider that around 110 new dwellings would attract roughly 300 new residents with well over a hundred extra motor vehicles between them, and increase demand for school places by at least a hundred, just how far will that £1,008,254.52 stretch?

Does Mark Owen and the charity bosses who approved his perks and company car and salary hikes – whilst the horse-loving staff at the sharp end survive on little more than minimum wage – really think the people of Whitchurch are so witless?

HORSEWORLD PLANNING APPLICATION: A QUICK CANTER THROUGH THE NUMBERS…

Web ExclusiveOn the trail...A curious tale, is this HorseWorld planning application shenanigans

As we reported yesterday, the HOPELESS BOSS of the charity (which, it should go without saying, does great work rehoming and rehabilitating horses, donkeys and other equine beasts that have come upon hard times) – Mark ‘Large Sums’ Owen – has been leaning on his 60-odd employees and 150+ volunteers to send in letters of support to BANES Council.

We reported that – based on Bath & North East Somerset Council’s own figures – there had been 615 letters of objection and 110 letters of support. Having crunching through all the available information, we can reveal some STARTLING FACTS.

There have actually been 108 expressions of support, from a total of 72 people, split across two separate planning applications – both the ‘enabling’ application for a massive housing development, and the ‘enabled’ application for a new visitor centre.

Even more interesting is that of those 72 supporters, we have POSITIVELY IDENTIFIED* 23 of them as trustees, executive officers, managers, paid employees or current (or very recent) volunteers. A 24th is a partner in HorseWorld’s investment manager Smith & Williamson – alongside trustee Michael Neale. A 25th appears to be the wife of a director. Of these 25 with clear, proven interests in HorseWorld, just SIX have declared that interest.

Curiously, of the other 47 supporters, only FOUR mention any specific connection to HorseWorld: the mother of a volunteer, an ex-volunteer, and two businesses which trade with the charity – something of a statistical anomaly in the circumstances…

Is Large Sums getting so desperate that he thinks he can get away with such an amateurish attempt to ‘astroturf’ support for his ill-thought out master plan?

* Just to be clear, we have only counted clear evidence of close connection to HorseWorld – such as paid employment, current or very recent volunteering etc – and we haven’t sneakily included every person who has ‘Liked’ a post on the HorseWorld Facebook page, or described themselves somewhere as a ‘supporter’ of the charity.

HORSEWORLD REVISITED: M.D. MARK OWEN & HIS MAGIC STAFF WRITE-ATHON

More scandal from Whitchurch’s beleaguered equine charity HorseWorld…

HorseWorld M.D. Mark Owen: management skills of the back end of a panto horse

HorseWorld M.D. Mark Owen: management skills of the back end of a panto horse

Web ExclusiveFull-of-himself HorseWorld boss Mark ‘Not That One’ Owen has been serving up the Kool-Aid to his demoralised staff and forcing them to write to Bath & North Somerset Council…

Why? He wants them to support his INSANE PLANS to knock down the current visitor centre so that he can flog off the land to housing developers – and, err, build an ugly gurt shed of a new visitor centre!

The scheme – which would see 125 houses squashed into a village of only 460 dwellings – could be the last roll of the dice for Owen, who took hold of the reins in 2008. Desperate to justify a 2013 pay rise that many would call OBSCENE – even if it were for the MD of a well-performing charity, let alone one that’s lost over a million quid in just two years – Owen’s attention has been fixed on getting planning permission for his madcap plans. His vain hope? That this might improve the ‘Visitor Offer’ and thereby solve the BUDGETARY CRISIS he himself created during his flimsy tenure.

It’s not a view shared by locals – 615 letters objecting have already been received by BANES, along with representations against the development from both Whitchurch and Compton Dando Parish Councils, plus Bristol City Council and the Whitchurch Village Action Group.

Particular concerns have been the added strain on local schools, services and roads, Owen’s back-of-a-fag-packet estimates of increased visitor numbers and memberships, building into the greenbelt, and a lack of environmental features.

But ever the resourceful spiv, Owen hatched a cunning plan to win over the BANES Planning Development Committee, which meets this Wednesday (23 October) to consider his planning applicationDEMANDING staff must write to the council with letters of support for his plan! No ifs, no buts, that letter had to be penned. Only they mustn’t say they’re connected to HorseWorld, lest they undermine their case.

A swift look at the council’s planning website reveals a large proportion of those 110 letters ‘supporting’ Owen’s plans are, in fact, from the charity’s paid employees, volunteers and even trustees. They don’t reveal themselves as such, no doubt in the hope that the council will be hoodwinked into thinking they’re independent-minded people.

Those supporters deftly avoiding any mention of their connection to HorseWorld include finance supremo Nikki Bridges (remember her from The BRISTOLIAN #4.7?), Director of National Equine Welfare Jerry Watkins and his wife Dawn Parker-Watkins, human resources boss Becky Hopkins, trustee Marg Stenner, visitor centre coordinator Sharon Crewe, marketing and communications manager Samantha Greatbanks, education worker Kim Pounsberry, training groom Kayleigh Macleod

Meanwhile, those HorseWorld trustees who’ve supported Owen every step of his disastrous way – like Andrew Dowden, Ernie Hemmings and John Newman – remain desperately tight-lipped.

It couldn’t be that any of them work in the construction or financial investment industries with the chance of CASHING IN on Owen’s greenbelt concrete fantasy, could it..?

EASTON’S COMMUNITY CENTRE COUP!

What do Easton Community Centre, Burma and Colombia all have in common? None of them like trade unions and all use THREATS to stop people organising for better conditions.

A number of ECC staff are members of the IWW trade union. For some time the union has been trying to negotiate with ECC’s charity board of management – in particular on the issue of health and safety at the centre, which workers say is “FRANKLY APPALLING”.

Easton CC ‘bad bosses’ story still up on IndyMedia UK

Easton CC ‘bad bosses’ story still up on IndyMedia UK

At one meeting of the ECC board they promised to recognise the union as per the law. However, they quickly changed their minds, saying they would talk again after an asset transfer from Bristol City Council was complete…

Meanwhile the board has not managed to implement any of the proposed health and safety improvements. Instead they have SACKED a worker (a union member) for not being able to turn off a fire alarm while working on his own – which itself is a breach of the most basic of health and safety regulations!

The union, in desperation, put a post on the Bristol IndyMedia website (originally here) to highlight the situation workers there find themselves in, only for the community centre’s management to react quicker than they ever have done before – with a threat of an EXPENSIVE LEGAL ACTION

Great! Meet the charity that’s prepared to use its grant monies and public funding to gag a trade union and its own employees rather than spend money on complying with basic health and safety legislation. What the board possibly hadn’t taken into consideration is that locals concerned by these worrying developments can easily join Easton Community Association (membership forms available at the centre or on the ECC website) and put a stop to them.

As one person close to the shenanigans advised The BRISTOLIAN:

“Get stuck in and don’t let them transfer our community centre.”

FRESH HORSE FLESH SCANDAL AT ‘POST’ AWARDS!

For TROUBLED CHARITY HorseWorld (see The BRISTOLIAN #4.3) the race to the bottom is not yet over if whispers emanating from within the equine charity’s Whitchurch Führerbunker are anything to go by…

Shortlisted for an almost-coveted Bristol Post Business Award, the Horseworld management team forgot about their financial troubles and cut loose at the Awards dinner earlier this Summer. Hey, who wouldn’t jump at the CHANCE TO HOBNOB with red-blooded red trouser fetishist Mayor Fergo and other high-falutin’, self-regarding members of the Bristol business community?

"I heard an envelope was being opened..." Mayor Fergo pops up at the Post Business Awards

“I heard an envelope was being opened…” Mayor Fergo pops up at the Post Business Awards

So off trotted HorseWorld managing director Mark ‘Not That One’ Owen – plus the whole senior management team and even the chair of trustees – to bask in the recognition of their particular brand of business genius.

Like others attending they made copious use of the microblogging service Twitter to report on events – and as the vino flowed, the messages got raunchier. At a SURPRISINGLY EARLY 9:45pm came a particularly eye-catching tweet from the official HorseWorld Trust account: “Nikki has promised to streak if we get 10 RTs [retweets] or a donation on table 18”…

The ‘Nikki’ in question is none other than Nikki Bridges, the charity’s high-earning Finance Director – the woman in charge of accounts in an organisation HAEMORRHAGING MONEY ever since Owen took up the reins. Possibly not the most becoming behaviour for a charity bean-counter.

Her boss Owen didn’t even have the common sense to delete the OFFENDING TWEET afterwards. Much, it appears, to the annoyance of several trustees and donors who now suspect their money is being used less to support needy steeds and all too often in funding boozy gala dinner nosh-ups for HorseWorld’s MD and his underperforming pals.

It is also notable that while the Finance Director seems WILLING TO STRIP for cash, the day job has been suffering. The Charity Commission reveals that three-quarters of the way through 2013, HorseWorld has yet to submit its annual accounts for the previous year. In 2012 they filed by May – and reported a staggering £647,000 loss. Could the current reporting delay be in any way connected to an even deeper FINANCIAL BLACK HOLE?

Oh, and by the way, HorseWorld won in its award category – for (yes, you’ve guessed it) ‘Communicator of the Year’.

Booze-fuelled HorseWorld management team - including MD Mark Owen (centre) & FD Nikki Bridges (back right) celebrate with jobbing ex-Blue Peter presenter Valerie Singleton (right) at Post Business Awards 2013

Booze-fuelled HorseWorld management team – including MD Mark Owen (centre) & FD Nikki Bridges (back right) – celebrate with jobbing ex-Blue Peter presenter Valerie Singleton (right) at Post Business Awards 2013

FERGUSON FAMILY FIND FUNDING – BUT NOTHING FOR KNOWLE WEST

Congratulations to local group PLAYING OUT, which has secured major government funding for its work in encouraging “resident-led street play activity” (that’s helping parents make roads safe for kids to play on).

The announcement of the cash injection came just as several streets around the City Centre were closed to traffic for the first ‘Make Sunday Special’ events. The latest bright idea of Mayor George Ferguson – who’s still having trouble getting his ‘boulevards of solar-powered giant inflatable vegetables’ scheme off the ground – five monthly traffic-free Sundays are planned until October, costing Bristol a total of nearly £200,000.

Whilst a boon to the street performers and circus groups paid to entertain, you can’t help but wonder if the money could be spent better elsewhere…
Certainly KWADS, the Knowle West–based support service for friends and family of those affected by alcohol and drugs, which has just had £180,000 funding snatched away by the council-supported quango Safer Bristol, could do with a bit of that JUGGLING-AND-MIME CASH.

So maybe KWADS could ask Fergo for some assistance – or perhaps not. Knowle West isn’t really fashionable enough for Fergo, and anyway kids there already play out in the streets safely…

Without help from Playing Out (director: ALICE FERGUSONDAUGHTER of the MAYOR).

CHARITY BOSS RIDES HORSEWORLD INTO THE GROUND

Rehoming centre for horses heading for the knacker’s yard?

Does HorseWorld boss Mark Owen have the financial prowess of the back end of a panto horse? <i>Oh yes he does!</i>

Does HorseWorld boss Mark Owen have the financial prowess of the back end of a panto horse? Oh yes he does!

Trouble is brewing at the upper paddock of the Whitchurch-based animal rescue charity HorseWorld, where Managing Director MARK ‘NOT THAT ONE’ OWEN has been making some curious financial decisions.

In recent months Owen has been galloping around pleading with politicians and planners for the green light to build a new visitor attraction in the Green Belt, flying in the face of local people in Stockwood and Whitchurch unhappy at this enormous intrusion into protected land.

Pleading the charity’s poverty has been Owen’s strongest card. He’s using the massive losses built up since he took over in 2008 (half a million pounds lost each year, with rumours the latest financial figures will show HorseWorld is nearly ONE MILLION QUID in the red) as the main reason why he needs to sell charity land to build houses and a new aircraft hangar-sized horse performance attraction. The way he sells it is that income from this will be the only way to overcome the enormous deficit – which, of course, was built up whilst he’s been in charge.

And it’s not just half-witted councillors or second-string planning officers he’s busy chatting up: Owen is also noted for his habit of hiring expensive consultants – splashing out £525 A DAY on one to advise the charity on, err, fundraising.

Another consultant’s weekly fee of £750  seems cheap by comparison – till you consider they were brought in to run a fund-raising auction that LOST THOUSANDS.

Meanwhile, as Owen schmoozes his way round the city’s decision-makers wearing his best long face and begging for special consideration, he somehow forgets to mention that his allegedly hard-pressed charity has just given him the keys to a BRAND-NEW SHINY £28,000 BLACK AUDI.

Cars are a recurring theme for Owen. When first appointed to the job he made a curious decision to promote himself in The Independent On Sunday’s finance pages – trumpeting how he’d DOWNGRADED FROM A PORSCHE (to a mere Land Rover Discovery).

He thought this would make him some sort of people’s champion, but predictably the stunt SPECTACULARLY BACKFIRED, hacking off dozens of the charity’s staff, many of whom were (and are) surviving on minimum wage.

Owen started at HorseWorld five years ago on a salary published as £60k – a figure that’s since risen not uncomfortably.

And what do charity donors get for their paid-more-than-an-MP MD? Well over £2.5 million shipped, which has HAEMORRHAGED HORSEWORLD’S RESERVES, carefully built up over sixty years from legacies and donations of people who love the idea of a horse rescue charity – and now shrunk by over half in just five years.

Meanwhile, while his new car’s engine purrs, HorseWorld staff complain they are forbidden by Owen – for financial reasons, of course – from doing the very work they’re employed to do: rescuing animals in need. That costs money, of course. Something that HorseWorld pleads it has none of.

Vroom, vroom.