S&D Railway Trust

Yes, spot on, thank you. You have summed it up in very few words.

 

I don't know, this was not a part of the HPC bid but the WSR Head of Infrastructure was proactive in gaining working partnerships on a number of levels so its logical he has started this independently to the bid (and of course HPC would not have had an issue with that).

 

So the WSR wouldn't be paying any wages, but merely providing the facilities for these people to gain the experience?

 

Andy - I think it is really important that you don't lump them all under the name "Apprentice", for ease or otherwise.

An Apprentice is a very specific term. It relates to someone in full time employment in a company, who has time out (typically one day per week) for training, typically in a FE College. It has to last at least a year and comes with the normal employment rights, i.e. paid holiday, sick pay, pension etc.

What you seem to be talking about is people doing some form of temporary work placement while being primarily full time students: that is a very different thing. I suspect that is where a lot of the confusion has arisen.

When you first mentioned this scheme talking about apprentices, I (and I suspect many others) naturally assumed that this was the HPC (via the WSRA) providing a grant to pay the salaries of one or more apprentices working for the WSR plc. That would be a perfectly proper use of charitable funds, but is likely to cost between £10k - £15k per apprentice per year. So realistically, £96k would support a maximum of about three - four such apprentices for two years. That again strikes me as a realistic number for an organisation like the WSR plc to take on and manage in a satisfactory way - remember, there is more work for a company in having an apprentice because they initially require more supervision, but you aim to get that back as their competence improves.

Instead, what you seem to be talking about is taking up to 30 students from an FE college and finding them work placements on the railway, with the grant covering their travelling costs. I can maybe see why the plc might be less keen for that to happen, since it is a considerable amount of disruption to supervise such students, while you are likely to get little valuable work from them if the placement is short. It is not easy to accommodate people doing the kind of roles you mention for short periods. For example, suppose you look at admin type roles - if someone works in an office, before they get near any productive work they will have to get an IT login; undergo some form of acceptable use training for IT - and then what, are you going to allow them access to HR or financial systems? (You specifically mention both accounts and HR above).

Then on top you've got the free trips for children at school. Seems to me that there was actually very little money to go round to pay for all the things being promised. Had the scheme been to provide four two-year apprentices to the WSR, I can see that that would have been very valuable. Equally, you might say it funded the school trips - but let's say that amounted to £20 per student, with £15 going to to the railway and £5 to provide additional learning materials - £48k per year buys you 2,400 students, or about one class of thirty pupils for 80 schools per year. (There are about 250 primary schools in Somerset). But you can't do all those things simultaneously ...

Tom

 

Tom I take your valid points however.

1. B&T College were operating under the ‘Extended Pilot’ for the new T level qualifications, this means the people involved were going to be on the new 315 hr + pa on the job qualification. The FE people I was involved with called this ‘Apprenticeships’, they used the words rightly or wrongly as they felt it reflected the new qualification level and that fed through into the terminology used when we developed the bid. Your comment “Primary Full Time student” refers to the old, being phased out ‘Work Placements’ of 30 hrs pa. I understand why you make the comment as its as you have described been that way up until now, but B&T College were giving the WSR involvement in the national pilot scheme. I didn’t want to get into what is a brand new and being rolled out FE format as its complex and my post was long enough already hence I rolled the terms together just for ease. Also just to clarity these were primarily for young adults aged 18 yrs +, not primary or sub 16.

2. I think readers here may indeed have been confused, assuming it meant full time Apprentices employed and paid for by HPC/PLC because the WSRA Statement said that was the case (the £96k divide by 30 comment). Nobody else has ever said that and that’s not what was signed off by all so I’m at a loss as to why the WSRA would make that statement this week.

3. The placements (if you prefer the word) were not short as you would know from 30 hrs pa, these are in the region of 45 days a year, often in full time blocks. The marketing team in particular were looking forward to this because they could have full time marketing apprentices in for blocks in the run up to special events for example.

4. You are correct re traditional full time paid apprenticeship as most understand them as you describe with the costing you explain well, but that was not within the remit of the HPC requirements and it would not have impacted on the number of people HPC needed to demonstrate to their fund managers so was never going to happen. We could have done that through the OA fund as the remit was different if that had been pursed but that's yet another story.

5. No schools were planned to have ‘free trips’. The level of ticket prices can always be debated of course and I’m not going to start talking about the ticket prices paid by HPC to WSR PLC other than to say I covered this a few pages back on post #447.

Please don’t think I’m belittling anything you say here, in fact they are all of the questions me, HPC, WSRA & PLC discussed at length during the bid development phase so your comments are very good and relevant. However we worked within the HPC remit and all parties agreed to all elements of pricing, internal invisible costs, impact on existing staffing, etc. etc. The PLC had the option of saying no as they were a part of every stage as equal partners to the WSRA. They were happy to agree the contract and I assume have the money (I don’t know what the WSRA have given the PLC). It just remains to be seen if when the new Chairman arrived he undid the contract and these placements have not happened, again it’s a question to be asked.

It does seem that as with the S&DRT it maybe that he new PLC Management felt its ok to not follow this agreement and rip it up because it doesn’t yield them what they now want, and that’s the real issue here and the question to find the answer to (again I don't know). Its not what we define as an Apprenticeship or a Work Placement.

 

So does anyone know if any of these placements happened? As it was "up to 30" how was the money for travel costs granted? What would have happened if, in the end, only 10 students needed travel costs paying. Woud the money not be given to the WSR, be spent on other relevant activities, or just "disappear" into general funds?

 

Anybody who has dealt with grant funding will know its usual to pay the host in staged payments as a % of the total and not to split it down by activity in arrears. Again to try and be helpful to other railways looking at this as a funding stream. Usually grant funders are great to work with, they don't expect people to suffer costs and pay in arrears they understand cash flow is important so pay in advance in stages.

 

(Apologies for the rough editing of Tom's post, just trying to precis his thoughts .)

Aren't we getting a bit off the point here ? Whether the scheme would have worked as well as Andy hoped is irrelevant. The fact is that both the PLC and the Association signed up to a funding agreement with HPC and undertook to provide certain services in return for a specific sum. These terms were not a personal arrangement invented by Andy but were designed with the full knowledge and approval of the Boards of both organisations. They have not delivered on their side of the bargain and therefore left themselves open to the HPC recalling its grant. It may be that the HPC will be amenable to resetting the terms of the grant but, to date, there has been no indication that there has been any discussion between the parties.

This thread is supposedly about the notice to quit served on the S&D Trust at Washford. While at first glance there seems to be no connection with the HPC grant it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the WSR Board has trouble honouring its legal obligations. There could be good reason for that but, once again, members,shareholders and supporters are given the mushroom treatment : kept in the dark and fed on bullshit ! I'd suggest that the Board get itself a competent PR person to handle these more controversial matters before any further damage is done.

Mike

 

Grants are usually very specific about their purpose and the grantors would expect any funds not used for the agreed purpose to be returned to them, unless they themselves agreed to a change in the contract (and it is a legal contract with all that that implies). Any suspicion that part of a grant had "disappeared into general funds" would have the recipients marked down as unreliable and make future fund-raising by grant very difficult.

 

Hi Steve,

Have you any evidence of further work being done on S&D '88'? My contacts indicate nothing has been done further on the piston and valve exam, and all work has been stopped, as I stated, and the loco is still partially in bits. I am quite content to be proved wrong.

Cheers,

Julian

 

The evidence is in Steve's link. Dated 9th March.

Keith

 

wsr.org latest photographs. Updated on 14th March. <BJ>

''New valve heads being machined at Minehead for SDJR 7F 2-8-0 no 53808 on 9 March 2020''.

 

If I can lighten the mood for a moment, the legendary Roadrunner cartoon character is based on the Geococcyx californianus, a member of the Cuckoo family.

There is also no truth in the rumour that many packing cases have arrived in Minehead from the ACME company !

Beep Beep

 

It's by no means universal - some pay in arrears. I'm pretty certain for example that HLF grants are paid in arrears, subject to delivery of the outcomes for which the grant is funded (or delivery against an agreed staged plan towards that). That does mean the recipient of the grant has to have sufficient cash flow to cover the lag between carrying out work and being able to claim the cost back from the grant funder.

Tom

 

I can confirm that HLF grants under the "our heritage" scheme are paid 50% on award, 40% when the first tranche has been spent (and documentary evidence shown of the spend) - the final 10% is paid after evaluation of the project (assuming objectives met). So the recipient only requires cash flow for that last element. However, HLF do normally require some match funding so there will always be some need for own funds but by no means all

 

Going back to the original subject, presumably the PLC are at some stage going to have to start court proceedings at which point the S&DRT will file their defence and a demand that the PLC pays money into court in the event of the PLC losing.

Does anyone know when the PLC propose to do this

 

Tom, thanks for the correction, I haven't been that involved with an Heritage Lottery Fund grant, only around the edges of somebody elses and not to the level of detail you are talking about here so that's something I've learned and its why its always good to talk. HPC have three levels of different sets of awards based on award amounts, they are clear its all about the communities around them they serve and supporting them without imposing further pressure. So its staged payments, in advance. That's not to say they would just carry on dishing out the money, they are also responsible people who will have a series of review meetings to look at achievements and of course could decide to hold back, change or stop anything. I have the greatest respect for HPC & the fund managing foundation involved SCF and I'm sure that when the questions are asked and the contents of review meetings opened up they will be seen to have acted correctly, but of course that's supposition on my part, I don't know for certain.

In my humble opinion the sad thing through all of this is that good people trying to do good things are getting caught up into something that feels wrong and might reflect on them due to problems somewhere else. HPC/SCF are good people with a genuine passion for the community they serve and the local Headteacher is a good person who cares about the young adults in her care with a passion (I'm clearly bias here of course). The now departed volunteers are good people who just wanted to enjoy a hobby and put something back (as do most of the readers here of course), the various departed groups also just wanted to do a good thing in keeping 44422, 6695 & 4110 alive for the future whilst enjoying it themselves today, and of course the people of the S&DRT are good people who just want to carry on doing what they have enjoyed for 45 years and leave a legacy for the kids in the local schools. None of them asked for any of this and its all comes from one place. Are all these good people wrong in doing what they did in being involved with the WSR ?

Is the local MP right to ask for some justifications? In my opinion, he is. Its questions that the shareholders of the company concerned should have asked a while back, I sincerely hope they did for their sake, as we all as shareholders including me as a small 1,000 share one are responsible for our companies actions.

Sorry emotional rant over, I just hold the opinion that a lot of good people are being deflected from doing a lot of good things whilst we still don't know how the WSR is going to pay for itself going forward, the silence is deafening. Back to the S&DRT, helping these and another small group currently under notice of eviction is the immediate and urgent need as the clock is ticking quickly now and I for one don't want to see them leave. Its the same question: Are the people of the WSR and its communities happy with this or do they want to stop it ?

 

I understand that the Trust have had a meeting this weekend

 

A year of notice was given, so proceedings would not be appropriate currently.

 

I wouldn't hold your breath - Even if the process was started tomorrow our wonderful legal processes are not noted for their speed and efficiency

Just look at how long the ongoing saga of the WSRA and the contested sale of certain shares has been going on.


Still, I suppose that once any action does start any possibility of eviction is put on hold until the final outcome - so the cynic in me would suggest that gives the S&DRT at least two more years...