A GROUP proposing to restore the dilapidated sea pool at Towan Beach have received a barrage of criticism after abandoning the ambitious scheme.
However, Mayor Cllr Drew Creek and Mr Roux claim the group failed to present realistic proposals for the reopening of the sea pool after raising just £2,432 towards its £50,000 target through JustGiving.
Companies House, which maintains the public registrar of company information, issued a final gazette dissolution notice for the Friends of Newquay Sea Pool CIC on March 17, which stops the company from existing and all assets including bank accounts are forfeited to the Crown and any remaining trading after this point is illegal.
It is issued when a company fails to meet statutory obligations such as filing annual accounts, confirmation statements, or having no directors.
Newquay Sea Pool stated, “all donated monies” are still held and is offering to give people a refund if they message with evidence of the original donation by April 2 as JustGiving software “doesn't give us full details of who donated, especially if you donated anonymously.”
The group states all remaining monies will be donated to the Newquay Lions Carnival Fund for the “benefit of the entire town and publish a statement with full details of the amounts.”
Geoff Brown, the former Cornwall Council Cabinet member, along with Cllr Creek believe Newquay Sea Pool, should make greater efforts to refund the money people donated.
Cllr Creek said: “I am aware of the claims by a group who collected monies purporting to be for the reopening of the sea pool, blaming the town council for failing to meet its endeavour.
“As a councillor for five years, I can say with confidence this group have failed to present realistic proposals for the reopening of a sea pool to us at the town council. Given the derelict sea pool on Towan Beach sits with the leaseholder, it is not practical to just say the town council will take it on.
“Like many locals, I would welcome a sea pool in Newquay but this needs to be balanced with the cost implications of setting one up and overall, it needs to be somewhere that is fundamentally safe to use, this is not the case as it stands.
“I am pleased to see the group are offering to return people’s money, though a number of residents have raised concerns regarding the extremely tight timescales with which this has been offered, and I would suggest the group extend this beyond the two-week window they have given.”
Mr Brown said: “Given modern health and safety requirements this project was always doomed to failure, but I am extremely concerned the generous people of Newquay who so willingly contributed almost £2,500 towards the scheme to resurrect Towan Beach Sea pool have been let down by the organisers and may stand to lose their money. The question is what have the directors done or failed to do which has resulted in Friends of Newquay Sea Pool" being struck off and dissolved by Companies House?
“They have surprisingly blamed everyone else for the failure and not explaining why no accounts to Companies House have been submitted for the past three years. Surely as directors of the scheme they would have at the very least retained a list of donors, many of who were named on the crowd-funder page. Not all were anonymous by any means.”
Mr Roux believes the Newquay Sea Pool should have returned the donated money before now.
He said: “Around seven years ago we were approached by Newquay Sea Pool with a view to ‘taking over the sea pool’ as a community project, the town council only came into it later on. I informed Newquay Sea Pool that according to engineer estimates the pool has damage on all four sides and would cost around £100,000 to bring back into use.
“They assured me that they would raise the money comfortably allowing me to approach Cornwall Council with their proposal. They failed to do so however and only raised £4,000 so we were unable to take it further. The money should’ve been paid back to donors then.
“Nobody in their right mind would oppose the restoration of a sea pool, but the economic reality is something we all have to accept. There seems to be some misconception that you can gather a group of volunteers with a few bags of concrete and restore the pool to a level that would survive winter storms, you can’t.”
Cornwall councillor for Newquay Central, Joanna Kenny, said: “I am disappointed that the pool cannot be restored, I enjoyed playing in it as a child. But the costs and the responsibilities required by modern standards always made repair and reopening a bit of a forlorn hope. The CIC was led by those with considerable influence in Cornwall Council so if they could not make it work, then I doubt anyone could – so no point trying to avoid, or worse, shift blame. Sadly, it just was not to be.”
Newquay Sea Pool declined to comment.
Comments
This article has no comments yet. Be the first to leave a comment.