Llangollen Railway

That is a seriously poorly worded letter. Did anyone proof read it before it was issued?! Nor does it explain the context of the appeal, the reasons for the problem or what is being done to address the root causes.

Good news though if the immediate financial storm has been weathered.

 

All a storm in a teacup then !
A great future awaits with Corwen and a quality loco line up to serve it.

 

Not sure it's that. A mentioned above the root cause hasn't necessarily been addressed, so what's to stop another similar financial hole opening up in a few years' time?
The letter is interesting in that it differentiates between £90,000 the trust intended to pay as repaying a loan, which might be seen as fair enough, and a further £35,000 as "Running money". Unless that's a technical accounting term I'm unfamiliar with, it sounds very much like "pay back the loan, plus a bit extra to keep them going a bit longer" which sounds like a charity propping up a Plc.
This does raise the question of how dodgy would it be for all railway charities to find a perfectly reasonable way to get in debt to their respective railways' Plcs, and the Plcs to not ask for the money unless it really has to? Would it fall into the category of tax evasion or tax avoidance?... I wish @Bean-counter hadn't left, he'd know!

 

Thats the bit I dont understand, why does the Trust owe money to the trading bit, the PLC?

 

I thought I read overhaul of trust owned locomotives a page or two back?

 

Looking at the accounts for the Llangollen Railway Trust for the last 5 years (as per CC website) it appears that a long term loan appears in the liabilities from the Plc as a “deferred liability”. It looks like this loan has now been called in, presumably as a financial “card” to play by the Plc in the present circumstances.

The accounts don’t say what the loan is made of or when it first accrued, it could have been built up over time, not unusual for a Plc to transfer its annual profits to a related charity (particularly one that does not declare a dividend). Therefore past “good” trading years in the form of a loan from the Plc could now be called in when times are more difficult?

regards

Matt

 

Exactly the issue. You can't expect things to change when you always do the same thing...

 

Probably not!
And I think they should be offering more than complementary return tickets for donating £50 or more.
If I was going to donate that sort of money, I would expect at least a footplate ride.

 

That would be a cheap footplate ride. NYMR charge £350 and there’s a waiting list.

 

Quite - that was my thought too. Even on the Isle of Wight, which I believe is a shorter round trip than Llangollen, a footplate ride is £90.

There is a more serious point too, which is about soliciting donations using as an inducement something of real, defined cashable value. At the very least, it makes the recovery of Gift Aid on the donation problematic, if the charity concerned wished to do so. By offering a trip worth £16 in exchange for a donation of £50, they would in my eyes forego the ability to collect - potentially - an additional £12.50 in Gift Aid on that donation. I'm sure appropriate advice has been taken on that matter (it isn't clear from the letter whether the donation would be to the Company, which couldn't reclaim Gift Aid anyway; or the Trust which potentially could, but not if the donation is really actually a sale of a ticket).

Tom

 

And the fun continues - latest from RailAdvent, shared on their facebook page half an hour ago, states that (presumably using the letter from a fortnight ago as a reference) that the LR plc has entered into a CVA https://www.railadvent.co.uk/2020/0...nto-voluntary-arrangement-with-creditors.html

It's only just coming to the attention of the masses now, and with apparently out-of-date information - let the fun of all of the incoming doomsday comments commence!

 

Fortunately now updated at 15:30

 

Thank goodness. That said, the original, erroneous article will have reached a fair few people in those 30 minutes, who will need to be corrected!

 

The original letter should probably have read that we were considering entering into a cva if an input of funds did not happen, but no decision to do so was ever confirmed at board level, and the subsequent rallying round by members, shareholders and others has now resolved the situation.

Bob.

 

Oh boy, looking at the Facebook comments on Rail Advent posts this evening is wilder than the WSR thread here on Nat Pres.... The commenters have generally seen the up-to-date information and are giving RA a hard time over it. RA also in some hot water, quite rightly in my opinion, for posting non-public information and blaming LR staff for not updating them before the article was published to defend the fact their initial article was even made in the first place!

 

The guy behind RA is a complete plank, solely interested in the number of likes / views his page receives over presenting actual news items.

 

I must admit that the online article gave me a bad impression of the Llangollen current position. Sounded like they were shutting down!

 

Perhaps when people want to draw attention to, or comment upon articles that have appeared on RA, they can find and provide links to the real source of those stories rather than links to RA (Which do seem to be mostly cut'n'paste from other online sources). If they are unable to find such links they may want to consider why before posting . . .

 

They might not be on the brink of shutting down but they certainly don't appear to be in a sound positiom.