Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Club races off with cash as firm bolts
Builder £10k down amid Cheltenham hospitality row
A HOSPITALITY company that sold Cheltenham Festival packages has collapsed, leaving furious customers in the lurch.
Alliance Racing Club boasted that it was “one of the best established and largest wholesalers of hospitality in the country”, but now it has stopped answering its phones.
Building company boss John Turner of Bridgnorth, Shropshire, paid £10,627 for a private suite for 24 guests including champagne, silver service lunch with wine, afternoon tea and private betting facilities.
“Only three weeks ago they were chasing us to pay the 50% balance of our booking,” he said. “This whole thing stinks.”
Mr Turner was only told the bad news by Alliance Racing Club last Saturday.
In a letter addressed “Dear Sir/ Madame”, it wrote: “It is with sincere regret that I have to inform you that Alliance Racing Club Limited is no longer in a position, financially, to provide you with the hospitality you booked. We are in the process of approaching an insolvency practitioner with a view to winding up the business.”
Its website is still up, claiming: “We provide a first-class service while you and you and your clients enjoy the glamour and excitement of major British or international sporting events!”
The site also states “Sold out” for every day of the festival. Its booking forms claim that it supports the Bob Champion Cancer Trust, but the charity’s executive director Lucy Wilkinson told me that she has never heard of them. “I have no idea who Alliance Racing is,” she said.
“No one from them has ever contacted us, I will have to take legal advice. It’s not even our correct logo on their form.”
A spokesperson for Cheltenham Racecourse said they always encourage customers to book directly with themselves or official hospitality suppliers. “We are very sorry to hear about this,” he added.
“We have become aware of this recently and have done our best to ensure that those affected are still able to attend the Festival.”
Glasgow-based Alliance Racing Club, which could not be reached for comment, was incorporated in 2010 and its directors are Jillian Elward, 53, and Angela Docherty, 41.
Docherty was previously a director of Nationwide Hospitality Services (UK) Ltd, alongside James Welsh, which was dissolved in 2014.
Welsh, 55, was also a director of Nationwide Sports Hospitality Ltd, which collapsed in 2009 after charging corporate clients up to £10,000 for private suites at the Grand National which never materialised. The liquidators found that he failed to keep proper records and could not explain why almost £900,000 was paid to an associate company shortly before it collapsed.
Welsh was also a director of Sports Hospitality Holdings (UK) Limited, which was put into compulsory liquidation in 2010 over unpaid taxes.
And he ran Nationwide Trade Hospitality Ltd until 2011, when it was taken over by Ronald “Ronnie” Bennett and put into compulsory liquidation three years later for being insolvent.
In 2011, Welsh was banned from acting as a company director for six years.