Folkestone Sports Centre Trust: From £150,000 Council Grant to Administration — What the Sale Price Reveals

Folkestone Sports Centre didn’t die because it had nothing. It died because it had no money where it mattered: in the bank.

That is the central message running through the filings for Folkestone Sports Centre Trust Limited (company 01092545) — a charity with a substantial site and facilities, yet so short of working cash that it tipped into insolvency, shut its doors, made staff redundant, and ended up being sold by administrators.

Solvent on paper, strangled in real life

On its last filed balance sheet before the insolvency crystallised, the Trust still showed net assets of roughly £0.85m. But the detail matters:

• It held close to £2.0m of fixed assets,

• had only around £29k of current assets,

• and owed around £292k within one year.

In plain English: it had “stuff” (a specialist leisure property and equipment), but it didn’t have spendable cash to keep up with short-term bills. That “asset-heavy, cash-poor” profile is exactly how organisations can look stable right up until they collapse.

The administrators’ internal schedules reinforce that by the end of July 2024 the Trust was carrying a significant negative bank/overdraft position, alongside heavy short-term liabilities and a deteriorating overall position.

The cliff-edge: closure, redundancies, administrators

The Trust ceased trading on 31 July 2024, and administrators were appointed immediately after. The filings record 144 redundancies at shutdown — a stark marker of how abruptly a community institution can fail when cashflow breaks.

From there, the mechanics are classic insolvency, but with the extra complexity of a charity and a large leisure site:

• Secured lenders sit at the front of the queue (including charges over the property).

• Administrators must secure and insure a big, empty premises (costly).

• They must sell a specialist asset that is valuable, but not “plug-and-play” for most buyers.

• Charity disposal issues add another layer of caution and process.

Progress reporting shows substantial administration-period spend on security and professional costs — the unavoidable “meter running” cost of keeping a closed facility safe while marketing and negotiating a sale.

The sale: what was paid — and how close was it to “real value”?

The core sale figures recorded by the administrators are:

• Freehold premises: £1,484,277

• Plant and equipment: £324,122

• Goodwill: £1

That “£1 goodwill” is telling: once the doors are shut, goodwill becomes almost meaningless to an administrator unless the operating business is demonstrably transferable.

Real value vs price paid: two different yardsticks

If by “real value” you mean market value, the best evidence is the sale process itself. The administrators marketed the site with specialist leisure agents, with clear indications of multiple forms of interest (including redevelopment). In that context, £1.484m looks like a market-tested price: what a buyer would actually pay, factoring in risk and the cost of reopening.

If by “real value” you mean book value (what the Trust carried, reflecting historic investment and capitalised works), the administrators’ schedules suggest a higher internal value for the freehold and related works. On that comparison, the sale price can look materially lower — a gap on the order of a few hundred thousand pounds.

But that doesn’t automatically mean an “undervalue” sale. It usually means something more uncomfortable: not all historic spend is recoverable in a specialist property sale, especially where reopening requires substantial further capital and operational risk.

“Saved from developers” — and why the council’s role became part of the story

Publicly, The Sports Trust has positioned its purchase as a civic rescue: that it was able to outbid competing interests and keep the facility’s sporting future alive.

Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s own statements add a crucial financial reality behind the scenes: the council had been providing the Trust with an annual grant of £150,000. That figure matters because it underlines two things at once:

• the Sports Centre’s importance as a community service, and

• the long-standing difficulty of making the operation fully self-sustaining without public support.

After the purchase, the council debate moved from “can it survive?” to “how do we fund reopening swimming provision?”, with council discussions later circling around substantial further public support with a one off £2.4m capital grant.

Who were the trustees when it became insolvent?

Companies House lists the directors (charity trustees) during the period leading into insolvency as including:

• Peter Francis Gardner

• Glyn Hibbert

• Allison Frances Melville Mackie

• Len Mayatt

• Lynne Smith

• Derek Michael Thomas Timmins

• Anthony Philip White

The administrators’ reporting also records that director conduct and statutory reporting duties were dealt with as part of the insolvency process (a standard feature of administrations).

The final twist: administration ended — liquidation began

This isn’t just an “administration story”. Companies House records show the administration ended on 4 August 2025, followed immediately by a creditors’ voluntary liquidation starting the same day.

That sequence usually indicates the administrators achieved what administrations are designed to do in cases like this: realise the assets through sale, deal with secured positions as far as possible, then move the remaining corporate shell into liquidation to conclude distributions and formally close the company.

The Shepway Vox Team

Journalism For The People NOT The Powerful