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We are delighted
Graham Turner gave a long interview to BBC Hereford and Worcester yesterday. He spoke about the CVA and how pleased the club is to have settled it. Highlights of what he said are printed below.
"We are delighted. It's been a hard battle for quite some time now and required a lot of help to stabilish the finances at the club. But we've done that.
"Good season, last season and the sale of Paul Parry has helped stabilish things so finally we felt able to make an offer to the supervisor about the CVA and that was duly accepted.
"We went through the formalities in a meeting yesterday (monday) with the creditors. The proxy votes all indicated that it was favourable so the whole thing was completed fairly quickly. Now we are awaiting the formalities that say we're out of the CVA.
"And that will be the final invoice for the supervisor's charge and the latest dividend to creditors."
Looking back at events Turner continued: "There was an indication twelve months ago that if we didn't settle within three years, which saw the ten years up of the CVA, then the supervisor would have no option to wind the club up. So it became imperative that we took some action.
"Twelve months ago the major creditors, which were the Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise, rejected our offer. Twelve months on, the same offer was put to them and they indicated that it would be received favourally. So we were able to progress from there.
"All creditors were sent out voting slips, informed of the meeting and I think the vast majority of them accepted our proposal and it's all gone through."
Turner then explained why the club had gone into the CVA.
"I think it was to pay off the debt (which occured under the previous regime-ed). The debt materialised in another area. They borrowed money to pay off the debt but they borrowed money from developers. It was robbing Peter to pay Paul.
"That left us with not only the CVA debt but the developers debt as well. It would have been far easier to have started again (as Aldershot did) and at least we would have had control of our leases.
"But the decision was made to borrow money to pay off the creditors in the CVA and although we have acheived the second payment to them, we are still saddled with the million pound debt to the developers.
"And where that leads us to, we're not quite sure at the moment."
An obviously releived chairman summed matters up.
"It's been a milestone reached. We were in desperate straights when the club went in to the CVA, nearly out of business.
"We've pulled it around now, stabilished things and we've got that pride back that we no longer owe creditors that vast amount of money.
"The big millstone now is that one million pounds that we owe the developers. That is the next thing we have to overcome."