The Chairman's Page: Groundwork

Ever since the germ of the idea of forming a society for the Sankey Canal emerged the Groundwork Trust, through its founder John Handley, has been involved with SCARS.

St. Helens Groundwork was, in effect, the midwife of the Society, and John Handley was our first Secretary. For many years we held our Executive meetings in their office, first in Claughton Street, and then in Shaw Street, and it was used as SCARS' "official" address. The observant will notice that the address has now disappeared from the "About Us" page.

The reason for this is because our local Groundwork, styled "Groundwork St Helens Sefton Knowsley and Liverpool" went into liquidation in August, and its affairs were put into the hands of Administrators. In simple terms, the Trust did not have enough grant-aided projects on its books to be able to meet its management and infrastructure costs, and has therefore had to cease trading. The Administrators, PKF, will, among other things, have the task of finding alternative management agents to take over the running of the projects which still have funding. In the meantime, Groundwork is considering ways of continuing its excellent work in our area through a re-structuring of its organisation in the region.

Given our history, and the continuing close relationship we have had with Groundwork through various joint projects over the years, with one of its officers being an observer at our meetings, we are very sad at this turn in events. We are particularly concerned about the staff, who have all been made redundant, and send our best wishes to them with the hope that they soon find new posts. Our main contact for the past seven years has been Brendan Cassin, who had the hard task of telling his contacts the news, and we would like to thank him here for all his work in that time for SCARS, and send him our especial good wishes for the future.

Society Matters

We welcome new Members:-

Liverpool Water Witch Marine & Engineering Co Ltd
Mrs Joan Harpin - Warrington
Cyril Kerley - St Helens

Index for this issue     Index of all Canal Cuttings issues      Home Page

Site design and content © 2002 - 2006 Sankey Canal Restoration Society
Site design by Phil D.Long