EC Papers September 2017

General Secretary’s Report

September 2017.

July – 9 th September.

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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. 2.1 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. 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. 2.4 We have held one meeting with our project lawyers Morrish. The Head of Finance and 2 New Build at Quorn.

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