West Somerset Railway General Discussion

This has the ring of truth. If the plc folds, and somebody else manages to buy the assets including the track, that somebody may not necessarily run trains again over the whole length or even any of it. There are plenty of opportunities for development along (and maybe across) the line.

 

General enquiry: In the context of any heritage line, where do a Plc and a Trust stand in the pecking order?

 

The sad thing for the WSR appears to be the fact that Robin Coombes was invited to look at the WSR and its current problems (at the time) and potential ones. The problems he saw are still very much in evidence.
It was obvious to a great many - WSR supporters and those looking on - that he showed the WSR the way forward and that it was important to achieve that change fairly soon. Five years? seem to have passed with apparent resistance to the report and a noticeable lack of action. We now have a crisis where the reports recommendations were belatedly acted upon, but not, seemingly, resulting in an adequate solution.
There seems to be an issue where "the wood cannot be seen for the trees" in deepest Somerset.

 

I don't think you can answer that: every line has a different structure. The weakness in Somerset is that there is what on these surface looks like a membership body, but which turns out to have very limited ability to control the direction and strategy of the railway. I can't think of another railway that suffers from that in quite the same way.

(In the above, I am using the word "railway" to mean the railway in a loose collective sense; not specifically the operational entity).

Tom

 

It depends. Some have the Plc as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Trust, and therefore the Trust and its directors are in charge, and thus directly accountable to the volunteers and membership. Others have a Plc and a supporting Trust, which probably has a shareholding of some sort in the Plc, along with lots of other minority shareholders. My personal kneejerk reaction is to prefer the former arrangement, but organising along the latter lines is no reason for things to go wrong, the GWSR is set up like that for instance and we get along fine, with no tensions between Trust and Plc who are very much on the same wavelength. It's certainly rarely necessary to distinguish things as pertaining specifically to the Trust or the Plc, it is almost always simply "the railway".
The WSR seems to suffer a culture problem whereby things are always "Plc" or "WSRA" or whoever, which means that whenever there are disagreements, they end up getting drawn along the same lines and entrenching views, rather than each being separate, small disagreements to be resolved.

 

As an outsider, I sense one reason for the retention of such an inexplicably complicated structure is that a surprising number of supporters seem to hate one another's guts! Alliances get formed and re-formed. This is no way to go on.

 

From what I've seen on the various threads, I'd be hard pushed to challenge Paul's postulate .... much less his conclusion. Whatever the 'ins and outs', from an outsider's perspective, it's all depressingly unedifying.

 

One of those players, the WSRA are a registered charity with members. They had no choice as to whether to tell their members about the Serious Incident Report to the Charity Commission.


To save the plc (because it has the lease & the LRO) then a support organisation has to take control.
That means either a merger, or one hands over their shares to the other (as that gives ~20% holding)

 

The very fact that such a situation can arise shows that there is something seriously wrong with the WSR. There should be no conflict, because the two organisations should not be in competition.

 

The problem there though is that one organisation has a seat on the PLC board, the other does not, so would possibly be influenced by the board, What the PLC has done is to nullify any threat from a combined supporting charity from removing them by setting one against another, or from each other,

 

Which has long seemed to me to be the WSR’s greatest weakness since, without discounting the shareholders’ one-off contributions, the success of the railway depends far more upon the ongoing work of volunteers and donors.

I do not see how any organisation as complex as a heritage railway can achieve its best if so many of the key stakeholders are unrepresented at the top table. Even when it used to meet the PDG was never the top table as anyone can see from the old minutes.

 

I would suggest people take a close look at JJP Holdings (South West) Ltd & the subsidiary entities
https://jjpsouthwest.co.uk/our-group/

Have a look at the accounts for any of those;
Crosville Vintage - does nothing
Suffolk Passenger Solutions - does nothing
Aegis West - new, so far done nothing (& trying to break into insurance broking?!)
JJP Heavy Haulage - net liabilities £37,574, includes a loan from the Holdings company of £42,776


If he's so busy running this business empire, & having a family, when does he find time to be Chairman of the WSRplc?
What is it that makes the money so that he can buy locos & old buses etc?

 

and low-loader purchase for 130,000 that doesn't have a receipt, doesn't get delivered, gets stolen and has a 10,000 reward for information (all gleaned from the internet)

 

This may be part of the answer. <BJ>

Somerset Passenger Solutions commenced operating staff and community services in 2016 during the construction of EDF Energy's Hinkley Point C nuclear power station. The contract is scheduled to run until 2025 and at its peak will require 160 buses.[2][3][4][5]

It is a 50/50 joint venture between First Group's The Buses of Somerset and JJP Holdings South West's Southern National, owned by former Crosville Motor Services proprietor Jonathan Jones-Pratt.[6] Southern National's name is revived from that of a former National Bus Company subsidiary.[7][8][9][10] Its operation was not affected by the April 2018 cessation of Crosville.

 

And that isn't even the half of it. Take a look at this impressive role call of companies of which JJP is either a Director at the moment or has been in recent times (20):
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/officers/4GMl7rrI937YJIeqvrQCEKkoEC4/appointments

He must be a VERY busy man.

Somebody is now going to pipe up and say that it's perfectly normal for successful businessmen/entrepreneurs to generate shell companies faster than you can say "transfer of assets".

Public scrutiny is such a nuisance isn't it....

 

It makes an observer wonder who if anyone carried out due diligence. The obtaining of a certain "Castle" could be seen as a "turnkey" exercise to lull the GW worshippers in the wider WSR support community into a false sense of security. Fools.

 

The above could be described as the “knave” theory; the publicly available facts could also fit a “fool” theory of someone in over his head and frantically juggling to keep going.

I don’t know, and nor I suspect do 99% on here, which may be true - if indeed either or neither are true.

However, what is incontestable is that there has been egregiously bad behaviour to one part of the “WSR family”, such bad faith towards another that there is regulatory involvement, and there are evidenced cases of people and organisations being frozen out for being out of line.

I suggest that motive is irrelevant to those facts, and that they in themselves suggest something grievously wrong in West Somerset.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

Some may say that this is a bit of a punt at a individual, but unfortunately this facebook post appears to be very similar to a lot of events that are occurring on the WSR in recent times...

https://www.facebook.com/wsmradio/posts/10156661064290167

 

When some vocal individuals are moved out, you can put it down to personality clashes, you can say that it is not ideal, you can say it is unfortunate but it is the way it goes sometimes. We've all been there.

When groups start getting messed around you think there is something up, when it happens not once but twice it seems pretty odd and certainly alarm bells start to go off.

When one of your main supporter groups has to bring in regulatory involvement, then it is more than 'break eggs to make an omlette' territory, and into something much more serious.

I am reminded, of those football chairmen, who when taking over the team promise to turn the team into Premier league champions in two years, conquering Europe in three, but within 18 months, they've sold the best players, sold the ground to themselves, and then sold it off to developers (also themselves), evicted the team, the supporters organisations. We have not yet got to the point where the main stand is set on fire, or where the team ends up in court. Yet...