Tag Archives: Nikki Bridges

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

Following 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:

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

Employees, volunteers etc who did declare their interest:

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

Other supporters who did declare an indirect interest:

ANNETTE LINTON (Daughter volunteers at HW)
MICHAEL TOMS (Local supplier)
N.J. ROBERTSON (Local vet)
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 REVISITED: M.D. MARK OWEN & HIS MAGIC STAFF WRITE-ATHON

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More scandal from Whitchurch’s beleaguered equine charity HorseWorld…

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

Full-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 application… DEMANDING 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!

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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

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