Making the grade

Well, what can you say about the news of an increase in forestry charges...inevitable?

The team that worked with the Welsh forestry team including the governing body the Motor Sports Association and Rally4wales have obviously been putting in much work to come to a deal so first up we have to thank them for that. However, the move to a commercial organisation was unfortunately not the right move, in my humble opinion.

I voiced my view that negotiations over the original proposal to raise charges should have been challenging for no fees for repairs with the wider Welsh Government team including business and treasury as well as Natural Resources. The negotiations should have been based on a free of charge premise because Wales was getting a return on investment of 10 to one.

I was a supporter of Rally4wales due to the need for a voice to help the negotiations, but I haven’t been in favour of the outcome of the negotiations moving to a commercial entity.

Why is it a surprise to anyone that such a venture has to charge VAT? Club rally competitors have for some time felt the charges have been too high so why is it that the starting premise of this commercial entity to use the prior costs? Has the commercial entity done its own evaluation of what it will really cost rather than taking on the prior position? I’m sure, or hope, that this work has been done. I guess we won’t know the details of the negotiations but I’d sure love to see them.

Phil Price uses an old grader to keep his forest tidy between courses and it’s a piece of forest continuously used, day in day out, I’d be interested to get his view of what it would cost to grade a forest after each event......

Frankly the whole forestry repair is an utter farce, killing the real clubman element of the sport. Time for me to bail out and do hill rallying.

Well done to all for the efforts to date, however, please go back to basics and view the costs as a competitor and see what can be done for the lowest cost possible....please?