GFTU BGCM Minutes 2017

new income stream from 24 more rooms on the hotel and about a £70,000 new

income stream per year from the nursery.

What do we have to spend to get that income and what do we have to do to

generate that new income which, by the way, would be a good amount to

sustain the kind of education programme that we have offered this year, it

would be about the equivalent of that amount? We have to spend more than

we thought we would do. We have got to spend about £5.5 million to achieve

that, because the land that Quorn is built on is on a layer of clay with granite

underneath it and we have got to do a whole range of infrastructure work that

we did not expect we would have to do. That means things like water reservoirs

underground and new roads and new pilings and new foundations to do the

new build, which we did not expect we would have to do when we first costed

up this project. This is why the democracy of the GFTU comes in. This BGCM

has got to examine the paper that we have put forward and I suppose

ultimately the thing to scrutinise is whether that big investment of about £5.5

million, given that level of return, is the best way forward. That is the key

decision, because in economic terms that generated new income of about

£355,000 a year compared with an investment of £5.5 million, you could say in

purely economic terms and the capitalist market, is not a good investment.

You could say that. But we are not playing the capitalist market, are we? We

are trying to do something else. We are trying to build something under our

control which is of use to unions, which has a good purpose in the local

community and which secures the future of the GFTU, because, of course, the

other side of the equation is if you invest that kind of money then proportionally

the asset value is significant, is very, very significant. The value of the Quorn

site now compared to the £1.6 million we spent on it is significantly higher

already and that kind of investment in that kind of project, which would take

about a year, by the way, it would take about a year to build all of that, means

you have got an asset for the future that if there is a rainy day part of it can be

sold off if there is any desperate situation.

So how would we raise the £5.5 million? We have got significant assets still of

our own and you will have seen if you noted the accounts that we have done

214