Marine Group and Watchet on Facebook

[Mister E]

I am sure that the people working in these ports would want the local council to take over, at least then they will get paid.
The company has no idea so the council should not be worse.

I am in Pwllheli marina and very happy with the way it is run.

 

[TSB240]

It sounds like the Council hasn't been paid in the first place. So... yes. They will force that matter and you'll be expected to recover any costs from TMPG as services not rendered. If you paid via credit card, you can get a refund that way (assuming you paid at least 100.00 on credit card, you can pay the rest in cash but you need a certain amount of card). This means that for those people, they may end up having to pay a little extra, but nowhere near as much as someone who paid in cash.

Not true if you enter a contract with a company with well known dodgy finances and use your credit card to pay any fees especially discounted "earlybird annual offers" your credit card company will rightly refuse to reimburse given the eventual failure of the company or a contract not honoured.

At Port Dinorwic
This particular marine group has offered prepaid annual contracts for 5 marina owned moorings knowing they had been condemned by the mooring service provider as unsafe.

This same mooring provider has now reclaimed 25 moorings and removed the 5 unsafe moorings.

This is allegedly as the marina owes in the region of £50,000 in unpaid mooring and harbour dues from last year.

These moorings are described as " unimportant to their future plans" and "only a handfull" by the sole remaining director.

In fact most of them used to be occupied by larger boats guaranteed a dockside berth given a vacancy.
The lack of dredging,leaking and creaking ancient lock infrastructure has made it untenable for most normal draft fin keel boats and there are now a number of vacant dockside berths along with abandoned or rarely used boats turning green.

More than expected have left for other Marinas that can offer better services and amenities at cheaper long term visitor rates!

Sadly experienced staff are leaking away leaving a skeleton crew that eventually might get a new more responsible director.

One who actually pays pensions and wages on time and provides the promised improvements and expected facilities of a well managed marina on time and at a fair price would be good.

Watchet need to avoid this one man band marina wrecking crew. His reputation of expertise of dredging seems to be in tatters. The provided unreliable equipment is showing to be as useful as a dinghy fitted with karcher pressure washer on the bow.

He has absolutely no empathy for his staff, customers or local marine communities with the eye being on prized waterside property development spaces.

 

[Praxinoscope]

A sigh of relief could be heard from most of those who sail from Aberaeron when the Councils idea of getting The Marine Group to manage and potentially create a marina in Aberaeron fizzled out.
As useless as the Council is at managing the harbour the Marine Group management would have been a severely retrograde step.

 

[Birdseye]

TMPG is primarily a property development company and the attraction of waterside developments an obvious target for them, unfortunately the ’golden’ descriptions they seem to offer local councils of how small harbours can be managed and bring in increasing revenues, demonstrate a lack of knowledge within councils of the fundamental characteristics of harbours and their management and the dare I say duplicity of TMPG in painting such glowing prospectus of what they could offer despite the very obvious (particularly to anyone who uses these harbours) facts that their harbour proposals were far too ’optimistic’ and their income would be from property development not from harbour/marina management.
The problem now is to do, it may be that the harbours affected may be left in limbo for a period, whilst TMPG either get re-financed or finally sink below the mud they have failed to clear.
Concerted attacks by the relevant harbour users refusing to pay up-front harbour fees and further bailiff actions may help to hasten some sort of effect, but the main action must surely come from the relevant councils that own these sites and as such are the lessors that have the ultimate control.

My guess is that the councils were only too glad to get rid of what they saw as costly liabilities rather than assets. Certainly when I visited Burry port in the month that TMG were just taking over, the marina was virtuallt empty, silted up badly and really dead. Its not as if TMG took over a success - they were daft enough to take on a failure.

The same comment applies to Watchet where the previous owner couldnt make a go of it either.

Its difficult to see a way to viability for either of these two. Dont forget that even Swansea marina went bust at one point.

 

[Praxinoscope]

I'm inclined to agree with Birdseye #64 that both Burry Port and Watchet were failing before TMG took over and that the relevant councils were probably glad to find someone to take them over, unfortunately they are both relatively small and need extensive maintenance to keep them operational, this suggests that they are not commercially viable unless subsidised, so it's back to the council do they want a vibrant boating community in these sites which add to the local ammenities and helps to attract tourism or just leave them empty and hope they don't end up as total eyesores.
In the first case there needs to be a recognition that harbour fees alone will not cover the cost of running these harbours and some form of subsidy, whether it is financial input or rent / rate free tenancy is a matter for discussion.

 

[WoodyP]

I read that Ceredigion council were putting up fees at Newquay as they were running at a loss, like Aberaeron.

 

[38mess]

TMG were never interested in the boaty part, they just wanted the surrounding land to build on

 

[Praxinoscope]

I read that Ceredigion council were putting up fees at Newquay as they were running at a loss, like Aberaeron.

New Quay doesn't run at a loss, the council once let slip that they see New Quay as a'cash cow', Aberaerons 'loss' is a pure juggling of figures, by adding the cost of various non related items such as footbridge maintenance (bridge only spans river not the harbour) which is in reality part of the town infrastructure the harbour looks as if it is losing money.

 

[PCUK]

TMG were never interested in the boaty part, they just wanted the surrounding land to build on

I'm not sure about that as Onion Collective were already in charge of the East Quay development.