“The accommodation came on-line in mid August”, we are told, “and was fully booked for the summer”. By my reckoning, that means it was fully booked for roughly two weeks.

The accommodation comprises a wing of the main house which is said to be “earning its keep” – whatever that means – while the one bed cottage behind it is fully booked until November – i.e for the next 2 months. As we know, lettings are being handled by an agent, which will typically pocket 20%+ of the takings.

As for the weddings, the castle is looking forward to its first bookings next year – a year after the place was opened and the hugely expensive marquee went up.

The column is full of praise for its (unpaid) volunteers, and is seeking more of them, including gardeners. The castle’s gardens comprise a huge swathe of lawn and a kitchen garden, and it employs a full-time gardener and a full-time caretaker who should, you’d have thought, be capable of managing that little lot without any help.

And finally, there are reports that someone asked at last week’s snap AGM why the castle’s rankings on Tripadvisor were so bad. The members were told that the trustees did not monitor that particular website, which seems odd given that someone from the castle responds to every single comment with a piece which invariably starts “Thank you for your valuable feedback”.

Which reminds us again of the mystery of the two trusts. And the question – why?

One possibility must be that the Gang of Five thought it best – given the recent adverse publicity – to bring forward the AGM lest any more bad news be broadcast. Providing the pretext was the ever-obliging Glen Johnson, doing his Captain Oates act.

I think much more information is needed to understand the accounts than is presented here. I’m not even sure which of the the two trusts are described.

This is more like the abbreviated accounts shown in the beta version of the Companies House website. Huge amounts of data which could be useful to competitors, but so cut down as to be useless, except in showing that activity is taking place.

From Facebook:
Castell Aberteifi – Cardigan Castle added 2 new photos to the album: Cafe 1176.
6 July ·
We are looking for an experienced and enthusiastic supervisor to join our team at Cafe 1176, Cardigan Castle. Knowledge and experience of excellent service and customer care is imperative. For further information please email your C.V to davidcoates@finessecatering.com
Ni’n edrych am goruchwyliwr profiadol i ymuno gyda tim Caffi 1176, Castell Aberteifi. Mae profiad ymarferol a gwybodaeth am wasanaeth a gofal cwsmer arbennig yn angenrheidiol. Am fwy o wybodaeth neu danfonwch eich C.V at davidcoates@finessecatering.com

follow this link and click on venues.

For accommodation, go to the Cadwgan website, make a booking for one of the properties and see where it takes you. Also see who else is letting through this agency.

This is all a bit unfair, there are only a certain number of businesses in this field in west Wales. I’m not sure that any others would feel they have not had a fair crack at the whip in getting work out of the enterprise. Many of the contracts here would be too low to be registered under a procurement policy. However, there never appears to have been an open process to obtain sub-contractors. Llanelli House held a Jobs Fair for prospective contractors after it won it’s initial Heritage Lottery award.

One is the “heritage assets” on the balance sheet. Basically, that’s £7+ million of fresh air. The “asset” as far as I can tell is just the money they’ve spent on restoration. The notes say that because it’s impossible to value the asset (ie the Castle) by any conventional means, they will just value it at the money spent on restoration. I can understand that, and in the “smoke and mirrors” world of accountancy, I’m sure it’s an above board practice.

But, if you are saying that the value of the castle is £7 milion because that’s what you’ve spent on it, then surely you need to spend £7 million on it. In other words, the increase in value of the castle should be cancelled out by the money spent on restoration.

Yet, the “Heritage Assets” of the trust have increased by £2 025 025 yet according to their Resources Expended, they only spent £398 636 on Castle renovation. This increase in value appears magival to me – the trustees must be doing an amazing job…

Although, according to the balance sheet, there has been £2 084 912 of work done. If this was done at a cost of £398 636, then I would like to meet their builders!

Even more odd to me is the incoming grants this year were £3 414 236. Yet only £398 636 was spent on renovation. Last year, there were grants of £4 604 398, for an expenditure on castle renovation of £294 845. The rest of the grants are sitting in bank accounts.

The other point is that, on the BBC, there was a trustee (I think) who basically said that if people wanted to ensure that the work was done well, and that the project went along as they wanted it to, then they should join the trust. It was a simple enough statement, more or less that these complainers were just that. People who weren;t willing to put themselves out by joining, but just content to sit on the sidelines and snipe. Yet, how would we join, if one has to pass a Spanish inquisition style court room, something only otherwise seen in the Labour party before the election of a leader that is at odds with the cozy Westminster consensus? (It was Friday’s Post Cyntaf, I think, in case anyone wants to hear it again)

I understand. You’re saying that most of the jobs the Castle claims to have created may in fact be done by people employed by agencies.

The fact that contracts went to local companies is, on the one hand, to be commended; but on the other hand, it must raise the possibility that those running these agencies are known to those running the Castle. Which then takes us down the well-worn path of the tendering process. Were these contracts put out to tender? Were they widely advertised?

Do you have the name of the agency in Tresaith that filled the cafe vacancies? And given how so many of them are in the ‘hospitality’ business there must be a strong possibility that the “west Wales holiday accommodation agency” is also familiar to members of the Gang of Four.

The problem with using the ‘equivalent’ of a full-time job is that it’s so easy to get ‘confused’, and end up counting part-time jobs as full-time.

Anon makes some valid points. The report does try to address some of the criticism, by which I mean it seeks to defend or excuse the trustees. As with their attempt to spin the resignation of Glen Johnson, a lot of it does not really stand up to scrutiny. The concert fiasco is the most obvious case.

The Bellowhead bash was advertised everywhere as a “Grand Opening Concert”, and we are being told that this was a mistake made without the trustees’ involvement. Yet the castle employs a PR firm, and they would no doubt have worked closely on promoting the event with Sue Lewis.

As for the concert held following the visit by Carwyn Jones, that really does seem to have been an afterthought because promotion of that event, now we are told the “real grand opening” was not advertised or promoted until well after tickets for Bellowhead had gone on sale, and the Bellowhead concert took place a month after the Noson Beirdd a Chantorion. Incidentally, most of the work behind the Welsh concert was carried out by Cris Tomos after his return to work, and as we know, the trustees sacked him immediately afterwards.

I don’t know if the staffing review of 2014 has ever been made public, but many of the irritants in the smooth running of the first year of operations in the Castle seem to run directly from the contents and the way this review was implemented.

The annual report says 25 local residents have been employed since the castle opened, which is deemed to be a good thing as the business plan said 19.5 FTE. When the Trust first had employees, its’ website gave details of them, along with the trustees. Obviously, some people would rather not have their identities revealed and that’s fine; there will be cleaners and ground staff along with the more headline managers.

The report here gives no more mention of the staff except three were trustees who became staff and one who left by mutual agreement. There is no breakdown of staff roles or numbers, similar to this, in the notes to the financial statements in the year ended 31 March 2015:
The average number of staff employed by the charity during the year was as follows:
Management 1
Operational 3
Finance 1

In order to go from 5 to 25 employees, a reasonable level of staff management skills should be expected. I suspect a large portion of the 25 are short term contracts for specific tasks.

Not much information can be gleaned anywhere about these staff positions, were they advertised in the local Jobcentre? Two little snippets of information were possible to see via the Trust website over the summer. The first was a need for staff to work in the restaurant. Applications to a catering service agency based in Tresaith who run services in a number of tourist locations in west Wales. The second is that accommodation in the Castle is organised by a west wales holiday accommodation agency.
The cleaning may be done by a cleaning agency, of which there are several in west Wales. I have no information on that.

There is no problem in using outside agencies to undertake specific tasks. There are many advantages, such as greater skills, a wide range of contacts and probably, cheaper costs. But how do you work out all the job equivalents that these agencies cover? Half a day here, an hour there for the Castle and then back to some other establishment that needs cover.

When the original business plan was prepared for the Castle, it was before the recession. We knew little of zero hours contracts and the Polish butchers had only just arrived in Llanybydder (that’s not a dig at EU workers).