Aura chair rejects claims over Gwella transfer delays

The chair of Aura Leisure and Libraries’ board has rejected Flintshire County Council’s claims that the employee-owned company was obstructive and drove up costs during the transfer to Gwella.

Sara Mogel OBE said Aura – which employed more than 250 people to run leisure centres, libraries, heritage services and play areas across the county – did all it could in the short space of time it was given to make the transition as smooth as possible.

Earlier this week, Flintshire County Council’s Cabinet received a report on the financial impact of transferring Aura’s services to a new local authority trading company, Gwella.

Gwella has now been operating the same services as Aura since November. The report stated that significant, undisclosed initial start-up costs were increased due to the obstructive attitude of Aura.

These included just over £26,000 for new uniforms and branding and £174,000 in direct debit payments Gwella were unable to collect in November.

Cllr Mared Eastwood, Cabinet Member for Education, Welsh Language, Culture and Leisure told the meeting: “The majority of the income loss of £174,000 resulted from the non-engagement of Aura and their delay in providing the information needed for us to process the direct debits in November.”

She also blamed the fact residents cancelled memberships at the time of the transfer on ‘campaigns run by opposition councillors rather than the transfer itself’.

Deputy leader of the Council Cllr Richard Jones claimed that Aura ‘made little attempt to assist in the process’ of transferring to Gwella while Cllr Chris Bithell said: “In regard to Aura they were most uncooperative in terms of affecting the transfer… that was just bloody-mindedness on behalf of the previous operators.”

But Mrs Mogel has defended Aura’s role in the transfer, arguing that staff- working for an employee-owned community benefit society – did all they could in a difficult situation and constrained timetable and accused Flintshire County Council of being unprepared for the transfer.

Many of the staff who worked for Aura now work for Gwella and Mrs Mogel says they dispute the claims made at cabinet.

“What has upset a lot of people is that staff worked very hard in a short space of time to make a smooth transfer,” she said.

“I had senior staff at Aura working 60 hour weeks to make sure the staff TUPE (the transfer of staff contracts between companies) was handled smoothly and sensitively, that we met all the requirements of the law in terms of direct debits and to novate contracts so that Gwella could take over the contracts that were signed by Aura.”

Aura rejected a proposed new contract with Flintshire, which included clauses including a one-month notice period to end the agreement and a funding review every six months – in mid-September. Within weeks the services were being transferred to the new company – Gwella.

“Aura worked hard to make all this happen in such a short period of time,” said Mrs Mogel. “We were basically given a week to do what would usually have taken months and then to be blamed for something that was out of our control seems unfair on the staff.”

Singling out the point that direct debits were unable to be processed in November, Mrs Mogel said the speed of the decision meant it was never realistically possible to transfer them across.

“They were made aware in October that direct debits would be a problem,” she said. “It wasn’t sprung on them.

“But when it looked like we weren’t going to get a contract we could sign we talked to our bank about the direct debits because we wanted to make sure that we were within the law during any potential transfer.

“They told us it normally takes six months to transfer direct debits over. It’s a three way process where you have to contact everyone you have a direct debit and get consent to give their details to a new company, the customer has to reply, then you have to set up the transfer and then Flintshire County Council has to set up taking the payment.

“The council knew in October they weren’t set up to take payments. The impact was so significant because Aura had always operated a Black Friday membership sale and as a result it was one of our biggest months for sign-ups and renewals.

“Being unable to take payments at that time was always going to be a challenge but to be fair to the council, they gave members that month for free which was the right thing to do.”

Mrs Mogel claimed the council’s problems stemmed largely from a lack of attention to detail.

“From my point of view they didn’t do any due diligence,” she said. “If they had I’m not suggesting anything would have changed but it might have been easier.

“For example the branding and uniforms were raised as an issue. These were owned by the shareholders – who were the staff – not the board.

“So we had to ask the employees if we could hand it over and they told us no, we couldn’t. So we didn’t have a choice. We also took legal advice and, bearing in mind the company still exists – we have just filed for voluntary insolvency having settled our final payments – we would potentially have been liable for any accidents since November if our branding had been transferred.

“For councillors to say Aura have made this worse is disingenuous. People are upset about these comments by councillors because they worked so hard in such difficult circumstances – they didn’t know if they were going to have a job or not or what the terms and conditions would be.

“Yet they continued to give an excellent service to customers. They are a terrific team.”

Flintshire County Council declined an invitation to comment.

By Alec Doyle – Local Democracy Reporter