K&A Canal Trust - not very enterprising

K&A Canal Trust Enterprise - a sad, sad journey into financial ruin

Although the K&A Canal Trust are still advertising on their website for volunteers for their cafes - the truth is that they do not need volunteers for the cafes because they have already let their cafes to commercial operators.

So incompetent is "Enterprise Ltd" - the trading arm of the K&A Canal Trust - that they cannot make a profit with a staff of unpaid volunteers. So they have let the cafes to commercial operators - who they describe as commercial partners. One can only assume they have done this to 'get round' restrictive lease agreements that preclude sub-letting.

So both the Trust Cafe on Newbury Wharf and the Bradford on Avon Wharf Cafe are being run by commercial firms who have no connection with the K&A Canal Trust and the K&A Canal Trust is now planning to allow a commercial business to open up a cafe in the upstairs rooms of the K&A Canal Trust office building on the Wharf in Devizes.

This is particularly interesting because the K&A Canal Trust does not, at the moment, have a lease agreement on the building.

They did, in the past, have an agreement with the now departed Kennet District Council (who themselves sub-let the premises from WCC) for them to be used for 'recreational and allied' purposes).

There is no record of the K&A Canal Trust negotiating a new lease agreement with Wiltshire Council - so one would have to assume that the same restrictions exist on use of the premises — and they will continue until Wiltshire Council and the K&A Cannel Trust negotiate a new lease agreement. Any plans to sublet space in the building would have to form part of a new lease agreement for the building - an agreement that yhey do no have at the moment.

There a question mark over the validity of the agreements that the K&A Canal Trust have entered into at BOA Wharf and Newbury Wharf with commercial operators As far is BOA is concerned it it believed that BW are the landlords and - as we are rapidly moving to the situation where BW and the K&A Canal Trust are one and the same - it probably does not matter - even if the existing agreement precludes sub-letting.

As far as Newbury is concerned the landlord is probably West Berks Council - but it could possibly be Newbury Town Council - anyway it is highly unlikely that it was the intention of the council that they would want to let the building at a peppercorn rent for charitable use - for that charity to then let it out to the highest bidder to a commercial operator.

There is much more to this sorry saga - of which - more later...