From 2007 until mid-2019, the moorings at Cove Head were managed in conjunction with Plymouth City Council by Cove Head Mooring Association (CHMA) which worked as an unincorporated association of individual mooring owners and supporters.
During this time, CHMA had an effective relationship with Cove Meadow Management Company (CMMC) and an ongoing well-established agreement for access to their foreshore which was approved by CMMC for eleven years. CHMA was run purely as a not-for-profit organisation, and managed its income stream solely to cover the costs of licences, agreements, and maintenance costs of the pontoon.
The legal framework for Community Interest Companies was introduced in 2005 as an effective and much improved method of running social clubs and groups, and over the years it has become almost standard practice to run locally-based social enterprise organisations as a CIC. The advantages over an unincorporated association are many, and include:
- A clear commitment to social goals
- Access to finance to maintain and improve facilities and assets
- Ability to own assets and infrastructure
- Limited liability and protection for members
- Familiarity and flexibility of limited company structure
- Transparency, clarity, and continuity of purpose
Additionally, there are some very well-defined rules by means of an asset lock that a CIC’s assets and finance cannot be distributed to the members, as might be the case in a commercial company, It was clear, and understood by the members, that from the start this would be a not-for-profit social enterprise and not seek to make commercial gain from its management and administration of the moorings, indeed it was in the members’ direct interests that all expenditures should be kept as low as reasonably practical.
The objectives of a CIC have to be clearly stated prior to approval by the government’s CIC Regulator, and our own Community Interest Statement describing our primary purpose of managing the moorings at Cove Head is publicly available from Companies House along with the Articles of Association describing how we operate.
The effectiveness of a CIC for running a mooring association is well recognised, and there are a number of such organisations in the South West, along with many others throughout the UK. Such status would enable us to borrow, own property, sign a lease for land and limit members' liability - all of which were becoming increasingly important as our access agreement seemed to come under threat and alternatives were being considered.
CHMA had strategic plans to eventually replace the old-style ‘wood and floats’ pontoon with a more modern version to provide improved storage for dinghies and which would be easier to secure and less costly to maintain, and so it was decided in October 2018 to investigate CIC status in order to enable raising the finance for a wholly owned asset, which CHMA could not do. After much discussion and advice, approval was given by the CIC Regulator and the special meeting to approve the transfer of accounts from CHMA was held on 29 June 2019. Unfortunately in August 2020, working parties were organised by CMMC to destroy the pontoon after having claimed that it was unsafe yet refusing to substantiate that claim. Given that CMMC have also denied access to the nearby foreshore, which they own, the way forward for us seems to be that access to the moorings is via elsewhere on the river.
One objective which was carried over directly was that the new company would continue to be a not-for-profit entity, and that apart from sensible and prudent reserves for maintenance and contingencies, the charges for joining and annual membership would balance the outgoings, and the Directors have been careful to carry this objective through in practice to the present time.