Cherries: Mitchell and Blake Q&A

According to the Registry Trust Limited, the club had nine unsettled CCJs against it, with creditors including former associate director John Piper, the Performing Rights Society, Bournemouth firm Think Signs and Poole-based solicitors Dickinson Manser.

But two of the nine CCJs were lodged before the club entered administration in 2008, while the other seven have been paid in full, according to Blake.

Piper confirmed to the Echo that his £23,974 claim had been paid, although he insists the club still has to pay his legal costs after he called in the High Court bailiffs while the debt was unpaid.

Think Signs also confirmed its claim for £1,909 had been paid in full, while Dickinson Manser declined to comment on its £398 claim due to client confidentiality.

The Echo was unable to contact China-based football merchandise firm Elite Sourcing, which lodged a CCJ for £1,094 in June 2009, while the Performing Rights Society (£5,082 and £7,759) declined to comment on data protection grounds.

Derby Books, publisher of former Cherries star Darren Anderton’s biography Takenote!, made a claim for £2,105 in July, but were unable to confirm the amount had been paid due to the company’s managing director being away.

In a question and answer session with the Echo’s Neil Meldrum, Blake and chairman Eddie Mitchell also moved to clear up confusion regarding the football club’s conference and catering arm Black Label Events (Bournemouth), as well as Black Label Events (Poole) Ltd, a company set up by Mitchell to purchase the newly-named Seven Boatshed restaurant in Poole Park.

The full Q&A with Mitchell and Blake is published below.

Neil Meldrum: What is the relationship between Black Label Events (Bournemouth) and the football club?

Eddie Mitchell: The catering and conference facilities at the club were still being franchised out to a company called Pumpkin when we took over the club. These figures are off the top of my head but I think we got around £80,000 per year from Pumpkin for letting them run the facilities.

They used to take any money over that as theirs. We felt we could build the custom up to exceed that income and we took it back off Pumpkin and brought it back in house. To monitor the situation and to see how much we could bring in and to put someone in charge of the facilities, we set up a separate company with the same shareholding as the club, which is Black Label Events (Bournemouth) and now we are monitoring the amount of money we have made. We have made far in excess of the money we were making when Pumpkin were paying us for the privilege of running the facilities.

If the money had simply been coming into AFC Bournemouth Ltd, we would have had no means of telling how much we were making in terms of profit. We are pleased with the way the trade has built up and we have definitely doubled the amount of money Pumpkin was paying us.

Black Label has its own bank account and every penny that we get out of it goes back into the club. It goes straight to the club and never leaves it.

All of the time and expense that has come from refurbishing on behalf of Black Label Events, I have not charged a penny for.

NM: Are the people who work for Black Label Events (Bournemouth) paid by the club?

EM: They are paid by Black Label because it is a stand-alone company that functions from the stadium. All the functions that are put on by Black Label see money go into the Black Label account and the staff are paid via that. Any profit then goes to the club.

Franchises like the Pumpkin one are a lazy way of bringing in some money and not caring about it or how much it is. To me, that isn’t the way to run a business and if there is potential to make more and build, why not take advantage of it? That it what we have done.

That is the difference between me and the people who were running the club before.

NM: Can you explain the relationship between your Poole Park restaurant and the club?

EM: I brought it in April and it was a business transaction I wanted to do. It was something we thought might help as an outlet for the football club in Poole. We then decided against that and we have changed the name to Seven Boatshed. It’s under a company called Black Label Events (Poole) because we felt there could be quiet times at the club for Black Label Events as well as times that are particularly busy.

We felt it would be a good way, if needed with people rammed in at the club, to transfer people to the restaurant in the park. If the restaurant borrows any staff from Black Label Events (Bournemouth), then it pays for them itself.

It’s a separate company but I thought it was a good idea to use the same name because we will use it to promote the club. We will do Saturdays when the restaurant at the ground is full and bus the people back from Poole Park.

We need more supporters to come over to the football club from Poole and there will be functions in the Poole Park restaurant that will benefit fans over there. It has a separate bank account and separate shareholders and is nothing to do with AFC Bournemouth.

But having said that, as with any of my businesses, if it can help promote the football club, it will.

NM: Was any football club money used to purchase the Poole Park restaurant?

EM: No. Not at all. It’s come out of my pocket. That is the truth.

NM: How many CCJs are against the club at the moment?

Neill Blake: None. All of the CCJs on the list have been settled. They just haven’t been removed from the list. John Piper, for instance, is still on there, but he has been paid. He just won’t remove it from the list.

We have paid all outstanding CCJs and there is not one outstanding. To get them removed from the list, you have to write to the person or company making the claim requesting it be removed and they have to write back confirming the debt has been paid.

Then it gets put to the courts so it is a long process. With any business this size, you might not pay someone simply by accident and instead of them requesting their money directly, they go straight to court and get a CCJ. You then pay it straight away but the CCJ stays on the list for a lot longer.

You can’t stop the way people deal with things, but, to be honest, I could write out dozens of county court judgements right now for people who owe the club money.

We have contacted every person on the CCJ list and asked them to confirm they have been paid so we can get these removed from the list. We don’t owe any money to anyone on that list.

NM: Why haven’t the club’s accounts been filed on time?

NB: We took advice from our accountants who said because of the time it would take them to file the accounts and put them in place, we should take an extra day extension, which actually gives you another three months to file them.

It’s perfectly legal. We did that and it was approved by the Football League. They were supposed to be filed on July 27 and we were running a week behind with them. Myself and Eddie were away and we weren’t going to sign them off without seeing them, so we asked for another extension.

They are ready to go now and we are going to sign them off at a board meeting on Thursday.

We put some discrepancies in the accounts right last week and we will sign them off on Thursday.

NM: What are the lease terms for Black Label Events (Bournemouth)? Would any potential new owner of the football club have to purchase it as a separate entity?

NB: There is a clause. If me and Eddie walked away, we wouldn’t want to have anything to do with the club thereafter so there is a clause that means the lease can be made null and void, which would allow new people to come and have a look and take it on. We won't be asking for money for it.

I can understand people’s reasoning behind questioning Black Label Events, but if you don’t run the football and conferencing separately, it is a real headache.

The catering after we took over the club would have been swallowed up by the £1.8million debt in the club at that time so it has to be answerable to itself.

The only thing the football club has to do with Black Label Events (Poole) and the Poole Park restaurant is when I invoice Eddie if he uses Black Label Events (Bournemouth) staff.

NM: According to the People newspaper, you are trying to sell the club. Is there any truth in that?

EM: Am I? Who am I selling it to?

NM: I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking!

EM: I don’t know where they got that info from but you can’t believe everything you read in the papers.