Minutes for Part 2 of the meeting held on Tuesday 24 January 2023 at 1100
Present
Committee Members St Mellion Representatives
Andy Martin (AM) Chairman
Matt Pressman (MP) Resort Director
John Dalglish (JD) Secretary
Richard Hazel (RH) Finance Manager
Joyce Bloom (JB)
Stephanie Latham (SL) Timeshare Administrator
Colin Rayson (CR)
Sarah Yardley (SY)
Minutes of Previous Meeting
Approved.
Correspondence from Owners
Nil to report.
St Mellion Team Changes
MP informed the meeting that SL would be taking maternity leave in March. A selection process is under way to appoint someone to cover the period of maternity: Steph will return in due course. The replacement for SL will be managed by Kirsten Hitchcock.
Also, MP informed everyone that RH would be leaving St Mellion and returning to London in March. Negotiations are in hand with Crown Golf to appoint a successor, who will be specifically for the St Mellion accountancy position.
Energy Costs
RH : St Mellion estate has been out of contract with its energy supplier for a few months, during which electricity was being charged at the emergency rate of 74p per Kwh. This resulted in some extremely high bills for occupants of lodges during the cold weeks recently. There was a general discussion about whether owners and occupants should be compensated in some way. However, subsequent to the meeting, SL and RH advised that the new contract with Npower was in place with electricity being charged at the rate of 21p per Kwh; in addition, the company had backdated this arrangement to the beginning of September, so a refund was to be issued to owners who had paid the inflated rate.
Web Site Updates
SL is directing owners to the SMTOA.co.uk web site. AM confirmed that the site has now been updated and the minutes of this meeting will be posted when ready.
Occupancy Grid
AM explained that, if all non-replies chose to stay in the scheme, there would be 155 occupied weeks in the lodges. How would that be for consolidation purposes? Debtors should also be pursued to recover money due (MP agreed this should be tested).
AM: a strategy is needed to make the scheme viable. What about marketing empty weeks? We only need around £12k to make the scheme viable (it is currently losing about £1k per month). Furthermore, what about offering shorter leases, e.g. for 3 or 5 years with a fixed price? JB cited her knowledge of a scheme at Barnsdale, which offered 5-year leases, successfully.
MP: we do not know what consolidation will look like but suspect that the process will have to happen first.
JB: the lodges could be marketed for rental after consolidation amongst existing time share owners, i.e. separately from any marketing of new, shorter term leases. The idea would be to make the revised number of lodges work in a cost-effective manner and generate more income. MP and RH agreed that this was a good idea.
SY proposed that a business case be drafted. MP commented that this would be scenario-dependent. AM suggested that this could be set out at the next Annual Meeting and could form part of the 10-year review.
Secretary Comment: this needs implicitly a specific action to be picked up by St Mellion. Action: MP to advise.
Finances
RH explained that the figure for salaries in the P&L statement covered the administrator’s salary, plus some of reception staff and housekeeping staff. Senior management time is not recharged to this account but is covered elsewhere. RH added that an element of the management charge billed in April actually relates to the remaining 3 months of the FY (January-March2023).
Consolidation, 10-year Review and Annual Service Charge
These topics were discussed together at this stage of the meeting.
On consolidation, MP said that he found it difficult to plan for the future without knowing what the numbers were. CR pointed out that the numbers would not be known until late summer, once most owners have completed their stay. In this context RH clarified that any owners wanting to leave the scheme under the next 5-year break point had to confirm in writing to St Mellion their intentions by the end of their stay (and, of course, having paid the annual service charge for 2023-24).
RH informed the meeting that the ONS (Office for National Statistics) data used to set the annual service charge for 2023-24 is the RPI for services, which in December produced a figure of 19.6%. All agreed this would a tough increase for owners, MP noting that it could make planning difficult.
The significance of the increase for the annual service charge in 2023-24 is that the revised annual fee will become the starting point for determining the new service charge baseline under the pending 10-year review, which will be conducted in the next financial year.
RH added that we do not have to use this figure but it is the basis on which previous years’ service charge fees have been levied. AM queried when it would be decided whether to use this figure or not. RH wanted to see what the figure in January would be and all agreed that a meeting would be needed in February.
CR commented that this would have a potentially adverse impact on owners’ decision making regarding staying in the scheme. JB suggested that this be highlighted in the minutes.
Post Meeting Note: CR sent all attendees an email containing relevant extracts from 2 leases (Wimpey and American Golf) concerning the index used for calculating the annual increase in the service charge. Although the wording in the 2 leases is slightly different, they both clearly state that the figure to be used is the “General Index of Retail Prices”. The committee will discuss this with St Mellion management at our next meeting.
AOB and Date of Next Meeting
No AOB. The next meeting between the committee and St Mellion has
been set for 17 February 2023. The Annual Meeting for the St Mellion Time Share Owners’ Association will be held at St Mellion on 24 March. Details to follow.
John Dalglish (Secretary)