Tag Archives: Mark Owen

HORSEWORLD’S ‘SECRET’ SUPPORTERS…(WHO JUST HAPPEN TO WORK THERE!)

Web ExclusiveFollowing on from our recent stories about how HorseWorld’s CRAP BOSS, Managing Director Mark Owen, has been CRACKING THE WHIP and forcing workers to send in letters in favour of the charity’s planning applications – due to be considered today – here’s the full list showing which of the 72 supporters who wrote to Bath & North East Somerset Council are linked to the award-winning Whitchurch equine centre…

Employees, volunteers etc who didn’t declare their interest:

  1. AMY WILLIAMS  (Marketing/Communications Assistant?)
  2. ANDREA MOUNTAIN  (Unknown role)
  3. DAWN PARKER-WATKINS  (Wife of Jerry Watkins?)
  4. EMILY MITCHARD (Community & Corporate Fundraiser)
  5. EMMA BURT  (Recent volunteer)
  6. IAN RICHLEY  (Partner at Smith & Williamson, where Trustee Mike Neale is also Partner)
  7. JERRY WATKINS  (Director of National Equine Welfare)
  8. JULIE SCARRETT  (Marketing Assistant)
  9. KAREN HARDWICK  (Visitor Centre Yard Manager)
  10. KAYLEIGH MACLEOD  (Training Groom)
  11. KIM POUNSBERRY  (Education Worker)
  12. KIRSTIE SMITH (Groom/Visitor Centre Assistant)
  13. MARG STENNER  (Trustee)
  14. MARCUS LEE KEARTON  (Equine Welfare Groom)
  15. NIKKI BRIDGES  (Director of Finance)
  16. REBECCA HOPKINS  (Director of Human Resources)
  17. SAMANTHA GREATBANKS  (Marketing & Communications Manager)
  18. SAMANTHA GROVER  (Stable Assistant)
  19. SHARON CREWE   (Visitor Centre Coordinator)

Employees, volunteers etc who did declare their interest:

  1. ALISON RAWLING (Worked at HW for 5 years)
  2. DEBBIE LINTON (Volunteers at HW)
  3. JANET PERRNS (Fundraising Manager until recently)
  4. MARK ROGERS (“Worked for HW for 26 years”)
  5. PAULINE REED (“Recently started working for the charity”)
  6. VICKY GREENSLADE (Visitor Centre Yard Assistant Manager)

Other supporters who did declare an indirect interest:

  1. ANNETTE LINTON (Daughter volunteers at HW)
  2. MICHAEL TOMS (Local supplier)
  3. N.J. ROBERTSON (Local vet)
  4. V CAMERON  (Former volunteer)

That’s heading towards HALF of the written support for HorseWorld’s half-baked development plans coming directly from, err… people involved in running HorseWorld! And that’s just who cropped up without any particularly deep digging!

Of course, no one should be prevented from putting across their opinion just because of where they work – but why hide your connection to an organisation that wants to undertake such a massive development? Unless the idea is to deliberately give the impression of being impartial local voices…

That’s certainly what the charity’s cash-burning senior management might like BANES to think its dealing with!

++ STOP PRESS ++ STOP PRESS ++ STOP PRESS ++ ++ STOP PRESS ++ STOP PRESS ++

We have had word that the HorseWorld planning applications have been dropped from today’s Development Control Committee meeting, which was due to take place at 2pm.

We will try and confirm exactly what is going on and report back as soon as we hear something.

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..?

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

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.

NEW BRISTOLIAN HITS THE STREETS

The latest edition of Bristol’s premier investigative scandal sheet is out now, packed with the stories that the other papers can’t be bothered to cover, including…

‘THREATS’ OVER DOCKS DEATH

Rush to silence whistleblowers over ‘accidental death of a cyclist’ that could have been avoided

SELF-POLICING ACADEMY IN RACISM ROW

‘No institutional racism here’ says institution – case closed…

NO REFUNDS!

Council holds onto cash thanks to major problems with new ‘cost cutting’ system

UPDATE: “BRISTOLIAN GOT MY MONEY BACK!”

Intervention by The Bristolian wins young mum refund!

B.R.T: AN OMNIBUS SHAMBLES

Bridge row as transport scheme fiasco trundles on – George’s Stalingrad?

HORSEWORLD BOSS RIDES CHARITY INTO THE GROUND

Rehoming centre heading for knacker’s yard?

TROUGH OVERSEAS AGAIN!

Mayor’s expensive Euro jaunt habit exposed

Plus: May Gurney recycling contract blackmail; Bristol Pound celebrates Mayor’s salary; local councillor annoyed that expenses won’t cover his girlfriend; Council lies over number of gagging orders; and more from Gus Hoyty-Toyty’s Cabinet Diary.

All in your super, soaraway monthly muckraker The Bristolian!

See the Distribution page for where to get your copy…