1
General Secretary’s Report
September 2017.
July – 9
th
September.
1
Introduction.
I have taken a period of annual leave since the last EC. Nevertheless it has been a very eventful
period with the organisation of the Kurdish Festival, TUC Social and stand, the employment of new
staff, an Ofsted inspection of the Nursery, and significant progress on the issues and plans relating to
the new build. Our new publisher has launched with two great books. I had a fund raising book for
the Free Ocalan Campaign published also. Our new beer has been launched and a new brochure on
our co-operative services consolidated.
Our immediate priorities following the TUIC are to make the Liberating Arts Festival a success and to
plan and build for the February Union Building Conference. Of course the November end of year EC
and social evening need to be good and new budgets for the organisation established.
2
New Build at Quorn.
2.1
The new build now includes two purpose built 20 seater classrooms as an extension to what
will be the new GFTU Office. The project management team are attempting a planning permission
amendment for this. Draft plans are attached.
2.2
The new build now includes a redesigned nursery. The reduced cost of this will have to
offset against the increased cost involved in extending the Goodacre suite. Plans for the new nursery
are attached.
2.3
We have held two meetings of the project planning group which includes myself, the hotel
General Manager, the project manager, the architect and the engineer.
2.4
We have held one meeting with our project lawyers Morrish. The Head of Finance and
myself met with Paul Scholey and Morrish’s Commercial Property lawyer Susan Poole. We have
extensive and interesting discussions that require a set of interrelated decisions between the GFTU,
the ET, and the trading companies. It should be noted that the decisions do not disturb the negative
pledge of £1.4m that the GFTU has with the Pension Scheme.
2.5
Here is essence are the issues: in order not to expose the whole of the site to any potential
lenders’ of the final amount of say £2m we may need to borrow, the current owner of the whole
site’s title, the GFTU ET, should sell the area of land that will be occupied by the houses to the GFTU
and any lending should be against that part of the land. This is called a transfer of title. It is not a
straightforward one in that it will involve transferring an area of land where all utilities cross. There
are potentially many advantages to doing this transfer sooner rather than later. We will need a
willingness to sell by the Educational Trust and a willingness to buy by the GFTU and of course an
amount agreed. Further tax and VAT considerations may need to be given to this
. An agreement in
principle by the EC today to purchase part of the Quorn site and to manage houses on it would
assist.
2.6
Secondly, we should regularise the unwritten lease arrangements with the trading company
a wholly owned subsidiary of the GFTU ET, and the wholly owned subsidiary of the GFTU ET that
runs the nursery.