Dubious background to airport parking scheme
Investors in a car parking scheme at Manchester Airport may be alarmed to hear that a key developer has been shut down in the High Court.
Great British Estates Ltd was put into compulsory liquidation after trying to sell the rights to a hotel that it did not even own.
Its chairman was former Tory MP and leading Freemason Sir David Trippier and the chief executive was Stephen Kane, who has “a proven and enviable track record” in property development.
The hotel project was the work of Toby Barnes-Taylor MBE, a specialist in creating branded hotels.
He found the site outside Milton Keynes, carried out a feasibility study and ordered architectural drawings.
“My plan was to bundle it up and sell the rights,” he said.
“Steve Kane of Great British Estates said, ‘We’d love to buy it, we have the funds’, so I handed him the option.
“I thought he was as good as his word but it dragged out and I realised he probably didn’t have the funds.
“In June 2016, he tried to sell the entire hotel development onwards, without having bought it in the first place.
“I said, ‘Steve you have materially accepted all the work I did because you are trying to sell it as your own, please pay my invoice which is now six months overdue’.”
Mr Barnes-Taylor wasn’t paid and successfully sued Great British Estates for just over £271,000.
The company was put into liquidation after failing to pay. The reason I mentioned that Trippier is a leading Freemason is the same as the reason for mentioning that he’s an ex-MP, to show that he’s an establishment figure and one that Toby Barnes-Taylor thought could be trusted.
Great British Estates was also involved in a scheme to sell investments in car parking spaces near Manchester Airport. The spaces cost £25,000 each and sales literature guaranteed an 8% yield in the first two years and a “projected” 12% in years five and six.
Sales brochures named Great British Estates as “experts in UK-wide developments and acquisitions”. A company called Miller Heywood Ltd was named as the parent company of affiliates.
Its director Christopher Miller formed Drake Estates Property Company – whose directors included Stephen Kane – as the vehicle to buy and develop the car park.
Mr Miller told me that he no longer has any “direct involvement” with Drake Estates, saying it is owned by yet another company, the Aston Darby Group.
“Since I am no longer a director of the company and have no access to the information, I am unable to tell you the stage to which the scheme has progressed,” he said, adding: “I am not aware of any legal action by disgruntled investors.”
My emails to Aston Darby Group have not been answered.
Neither Sir David Trippier nor Stephen Kane have replied to my emails.