When I acquired the Coble, Peggy in 2007, I lived in Greens Place with good views over the river Tyne to North Shields and Tynemouth and it was not long before I joined NEMT but by 2014 I had fallen out of favour, not with NEMT but with South Tyneside Council and decided to settle in Amble. My first attempt failed because I had trouble selling my house in Greens Place.
I had first put it on the market in 2014 but various estate agents had failed me and when I returned to South Shields in 2015, they failed me again so I sold it privately with two of NEMT’s volunteers as witnesses and for that I was extremely grateful because I was then able to afford to make a home in Amble in the late Summer of 2017. It did however, take a legal firm in Newcastle to dot the i’s and cross the t’s and the sale was officially said to have been completed in 2019.
During that time, I received as a Trustee of NFHT, two documents from the then Chair of NEMT, the first being the Letter of intent for Dinsdale Road flats on May 22nd 2018 made by the board of the Trustees of NEMT. It contained what I consider to be 2 related flaws:-
1) That NEMT would sell the upper flat and retain the lower flat for its sole use in the future.
2) NEMT would make a donation to NFHT of the proceeds of the sale of the upper flat of an amount equal to the monies realised from the sale, less an amount to defray all costs of renovation of both flats up to the point of sale, including all professional, legal and estate agents’ fees, council tax, utilities, loan costs and interest etc.”
The underline is there to highlight the fact that the NEMT Trustees were content to let NFHT pay for the cost of the flat they were going to keep for their sole use which was very obviously unfair. A much fairer way would have been to share the cost of the upgrade of the two flats and the monies from the sale of the upper flat and then to share the income from renting out the lower flat between the two trusts.
The second document was a copy of the reply to an official complaint made in September 2019 made by J. Dudman (Chairman) for, and on behalf of of the NEMT Trustees and was about the extremely disturbing rumours circulating that related to the probity of its Trustees and he invited people to protest about it at the AGM to held in October 2019 after saying:-
Worst of all is the suggestion that the board does not value the volunteers – this is most disturbing; nothing could be further from the truth. The trustees work with and admire their fellow workers and recognise them as the essential bedrock upon which NEMT is built.
As I implied in my introduction to this post, I was busy with things, other than NEMT matters, and I had not paid much attention to the detail in Mr Dudman’s response to the complaint except to wonder who on earth could possibly have gone to the lengths, to compile what appeared to be more of a complaint about the growing distrust of NFHT by some of NEMT’s members than a question of the probity of the board of Trustees of NEMT raised by Chairman.
I was not privileged to view the official complaint and can only guess to its content and it appears that Martin Wilson had been preparing his attack on the other NEMT Trustees when he had submitted as a Trustee of NEMT a questionnaire to the NFHT Trustees six months before. It was not answered by myself and one can presume that it would not be much different to the official letter of complaint made to the then Chair of NEMT in September.
I made my assumption on the comments made on the how the fleet of vessels being accumulated by the Trusts were to be insured:-
1) Mr Wilson introduced his letter with “As NEMT and NFHT are entering into joint enterprises such as insurances”
2) Mr Dudman says of the rumours reflected in the letter of complaint, “It has furthermore been implied that NEMT insures NFHT boats – it does not.”
Mr Wilson, in his questionnaire then raised questions with the NFHT’s Trustees about their membership, finances, management and policy under the headings:-
Membership, Visitors & Volunteers (7)
Financial (9)
Management/Governance (11)
Public Benefit (17)
I never bothered to answer any of those 44 questions and I also doubt that other NFHT Trustees, to whom the letter with the questionnaire was also sent, wasted any time in responding to Mr Wilson’s letter either, mainly because we in NFHT knew that the membership was identical for both NFHT and NEMT, and he finished his letter to us with, “I am on record as objecting to giving monies away where NEMT do not legally need to, and to entering into joint enterprises with NFHT.”
Both Trusts had been working almost as one for nearly a decade but it appears that Mr Wilson thought otherwise and he was not the only one. To me, the most notable thing about Mr Dudman’s response of the 30th September is that while he said:-
If you are wondering why I am not attaching the complaint itself, I do not want to provide it with further oxygen – being defamatory and containing as it does, a degree of profanity.
– he did not say who had written it and I none the wiser until one of the Trustees of NFHT wrote to me in ‘Confidence’ on the 2nd of October 2019:-
As Peter may have told you, we trustees of NEMT are under attack by Paul Gray (failed treasurer,) Phil Smith (voted off the board last year) and Martin Wilson, who wrote the 8 page official complaint letter after losing a vote of No Confidence.
Paul concludes by saying:-
Hopefully, (Mr Chairman,) once the NEMT AGM is done and dusted we can have another NFHT meeting when we can discuss the future and the legacy benefit due to us from NEMT.
At the time I respected the ‘Confidence’ note but when I came to expand on Claim and Counter Claim, I remembered that some in NEMT, had in 2018/19, thought that some, if not the entirety, of the profit of the made from Cordon Brown’ bequest, from the sale of top flat of the pair in Sandyford should be theirs and theirs alone as I have indicated in my interpretation of the events outlined in the three documents.
Put more simply, the decision by some who had a say in how NEMT conducted its business had decided in 2019, to withhold funds from NFHT but to return to to Mr Dudman’s letter to Members of the 30th September. At its heart:-
The next matter of rumour is the Gordon F. Brown legacy and a supposed improper transfer of NEMT funds to NFHT. Gordon was an honorary life member of NEMT, as well as a founding trustee of NFHT. Before his death in 2016, he informed both trusts of his wish to leave his housing property to be shared between both trusts. Because of the complications with NFHT not being a corporation Gordon arranged for all to go to NEMT – on the basis of proceeds being shared.
Both Trusts had been working almost as one for nearly a decade but it appears whoever was compiling the complaint made in late 2019 thought otherwise. He implied that they had been acting as completely separate organisations since 2015.
While reviewing the latest post in nemaritimetrust.co.uk, I remembered that the argument between the two Trusts had been brewing for some time and looked again at the amount of misinformation being traded by the complainant in late 2019 and concluded that, whoever had complained, had wished for bulk of Gordon Browns legacy go to NEMT, with very little going to NFHT, which was a lot different to the proposals sent to me by Mr Dudman to me in May 2018.
By the time I issued the Objection to proposal by the charity – NEMT, January 2023 the division between the Trusts had degenerated to the extent where the Chairman of NEMT, Mr Alec Renwick, felt able to withhold over £10,000 from the money left over from Mr Brown’s legacy, from the NFHT and at the same time, appeared to have taken sides with the author of the letter of complaint which gave rise to Mr Dudman’s response in September 2019.
Mick Dawson
2-Apr-25