Julianne Aston STATEMENT The background history of the Veteran - TopicsExpress



          

Julianne Aston STATEMENT The background history of the Veteran Horse Society and its showing and dressage series culminating in the national finals held at Olympia in each year can be found at:- veteran-horse-society.co.uk In 2008/9 Linda McLintock, a volunteer for a number years, resigned from running the VHS showing series, apparently due to ill health. It then became apparent that she had been planning to set up the rival organisation 15+. This caused considerable difficulties for Julianne who was left with the task of finding others to help with the running of the showing series. One of the senior VHS judges knew that Julianne needed help urgently and introduced her to Claire Frost at the VHS 2 Day Championship Show. Mrs Frost, at that time, appeared keen to join and help the Society, with the Showing Series. She made it clear that what Linda McLintock had done to the VHS was not acceptable, morally and financially. Mrs Frost then insisted that a committee should be formed to make decisions relating to the showing Series and to help run it. Chairman of the Committee was and remains Debbie Machin. The committee mainly consisted of some of Claire’s and Debbie’s friends and equine associates from the Stoke on Trent area. Subsequently a small limited company was set up purely, it was believed, to manage the finances of the showing series and to give the committee a degree of autonomy. In July 2009 the right to run the VHS Showing and Dressage Series was formally granted to the new Company, Veteran Horse Showing Limited (hereinafter referred to as “Showing”), under licence. Such Licence provided that any ‘profit’ made from the Showing and Dressage Series must be paid to the charitable welfare arm of the VHS, the charity Veteran Horse Welfare Society Limited (hereinafter referred to as “Welfare”). In the first year of operation, Showing made an operating profit and this was duly paid to Welfare. Since then, however, Welfare has received no further payments from Showing. Repeated requests from VHS and Welfare for production of proper accounts for Showing were ignored and only the minimal accounts for the Company filed at Companies House (which contain virtually no details of the income and expenditure of the Company) have ever been produced to VHS or Welfare or their solicitors. In 2011 the committee of Showing complained to Julianne that they were finding it difficult to develop the Showing and Dressage Series as they wished and demanded that contributions from membership fees of VHS be paid to Showing to assist with the Company’s finances. Although Showing was supposed to be self-financing and to generate additional income for Welfare, VHS voluntarily agreed to transfer to Showing a proportion of new membership fees received by VHS, in order to assist Showing, despite the financial strain that this put on VHS and Welfare. Initial payments were made including a one-off donation. However, the continued refusal by the committee of Showing to produce any meaningful accounts for the Company, either to VHS or its solicitors, despite numerous requests, caused Julianne to have grave concerns as to the way that Showing was being run. As a result, the voluntary contribution from VHS new membership fees was withheld in 2012. Showing then brought court proceedings against VHS in 2013 to try to force payment of this contribution. Such claim was clearly unfounded and a complete waste of Showing’s apparently limited funds. Inevitably, the claim was rejected by the courts and was dismissed, with judgement in favour of VHS on 21st October 2013. This and other significant breaches by Showing of the terms of the 2009 Licence caused VHS to serve notice of termination of the Licence on Showing on 3rd December 2013. Since then the committee of Showing appears to have effectively abandoned all attempts to continue running Showing and have failed to return to VHS the intellectual and other property in its custody, which belonged to VHS. It is also now clear that Mrs Frost and her husband have set up the competing company Senior Showing and Dressage Limited which has actively sought to replace VHS as the society for showing and dressage competition for horses over the age of 15 years. In using Showing’s connections with Olympia to arrange its own competing showing and dressage series, the owners of Senior Showing and Dressage Limited are effectively taking revenue that would and should have gone to Welfare to support its charitable work. VHS wishes to make it clear that Senior Showing and Dressage Limited has nothing whatever to do with the VHS and appears to be a profit making organisation operating entirely for its own benefit. VHS will continue to run the original and only ‘Veteran Horse Showing and Dressage Series’ and all correspondence relating to the series should be addressed to VHS at its head office.
Posted on: Mon, 03 Feb 2014 23:32:34 +0000

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