Important Notice
To all our friends, guests, customers and supporters
On Monday March 1st the doors were closed on
the Lamb & Lion Inn.
Our little business here in the heart of York was a
viable, successful enterprise that we have worked so hard at turning around.
We were profitable and employed 23 full and part time members of staff.
Since we bought the business in May last year we had been reducing the debts
that we inherited when we came in to rescue the business from the previous
owners. We had also got private investors lined up who were willing to
invest money into our project to pay off the arrears of the bank loan and
help us develop the business. This gave us the encouragement and the energy
to make the Lamb & Lion something special for our customers and indeed for
the City of York. Most of you who have visited us will probably say we
achieved that!
For over a year the business had been in negotiations
with the £54 billion bailed-out state owned Royal Bank of Scotland [“RBS”]
about the terms of the loan it has with them, hoping for some better rates
of interest and a working partner who would have some understanding of what
we were going through, and our plans to re-finance the RBS loan in full
within a year. Our private investors were very supportive, but clearly the
terms of the RBS loan needed to be resolved before they would commit their
money.
The conditions that RBS imposed on the business were so
severe that everyone said we must be mad to sign up to.
Just some of the terms included -
·
An impossible rate of interest
·
No ability to invest any profits back into
the business – instead any excess profits to be sent to RBS
·
A capping of Chris and Emma’s wages at
£35,000 each
·
An RBS ‘consultant’ to come into the business
once a week at a cost of £4,000 a month including fees and expenses
·
An extra 35% of the value of the property to
be sent to a special RBS’s subsidiary company – West Register (Investments)
Limited
All of these terms meant that we would not be likely to
make a profit at all or even a living wage. YET, we consented to it, because
we believed in the future of the Inn and that things could potentially be
re-financed at some stage in the future. Once we signed up, RBS’s lawyers
then started imposing new and totally separate conditions and insisting on
clauses that no reasonable person could agree to. Our private investors at
this point walked away. We attempted to bring in new investors but couldn’t.
We went back to RBS with an alternative plan and they dismissed it out of
hand within minutes.
On Friday February 26th our advisors were
told by RBS that they were pulling the plug on us and at 5pm that day they
would be choosing which firm of Administrators to use (they also stated that
they had been tendering for Administrators for over a week at that point).
We broke the news to our staff on Monday after they had finished serving
breakfast to our weekend guests. They were very upset but tremendously
supportive and truly loyal. All have now lost their jobs.
RBS have charged the company £20,000 for doing this and
have left us with no business, no living and a legal bill of £10,000.
The tragedy behind all of this is a bank who has taken
so much from so many, and is refusing to give so little back. And that’s a
tragedy for all of us.
We can’t tell you how sorry we are about all of this
and we are so sorry that your plans to stay in York, or just have a friendly
pie and a pint with us, might be affected.
We want to thank you all for your brilliant support and
fantastic custom. You can still email us at mail@thelambandlion.co.uk and
we’ll do our best to get back to you.
Good luck to us all.
Chris, Emma & Aggie Watkins