Trust in these people to ensure a safe harbour

WIGHT LIVINGIT HAS often been said that the recent history of Bembridge Harbour is as muddy as its bottom.
But a powerful group is now advancing an ambitious bid to take over the safe haven to ensure it is there for use by the whole community, in perpetuity.
Bembridge Harbour Trust has a powerful assembly of patrons on board. They have almost as many letters after their name as in them.
There’s Lord Brabazon of Tara, whose roots go deep into Bembridge. Then there is Maldwin Drummond. He’s the former commodore of the Royal Yacht Squadron and too many other things to list.
There is Peter Nicholson, whose surname most often accompanies Camper. He has lately been a director of Lloyds Bank, chairman of the RNLI and president of The Solent Protection Society. Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, needs no introduction.
The trustees are a powerful lot too, both in terms of knowledge, expertise and influence. There’s Chris Attrill and Arthur Robinson, who rely on the harbour for their livelihoods and there’s former IW Council chief executive Felix Hetherington, who lives just up the road and knows a thing or two about running a harbour.
The organisation is chaired by Donald Biddle. If you were to want someone to sort out finances and backers and work up business projections and all that sort of thing he’d be your bloke of choice.
Donald is 75 now and has retired as a chartered accountant in the City. He has lived here for five years, describes himself as a Johnny-come-lately, but is not.
He’s been coming to the Island, and Bembridge especially, to sail for 45 years now and his children and grandchildren have cut their sailing teeth in its safe harbour. It is the desire to maintain and improve the haven for use by the whole community that drives him. It is, after all, a unique place.
Donald has been part of a motivating machine that has hardly had to crank itself over to get results, such is the support from commercial and hobby fishermen, business people, sailing types, motor-boaters and residents.
And it’s not just been big players who have swelled the accounts of the Bembridge Harbour Trust to the point where it had £66,000 in the bank at the last count.
Villagers of quite humble means are among those 153 generous souls who have stumped up at least £500 each to found the trust. Their investment will buy them not a single share in the harbour, they have chipped in altruistically.
And, just recently, their efforts were backed by the leader of the IW Council, Cllr David Pugh. The local authority could be a powerful ally to have.
Donald passionately hopes the trust will be able to clean-up the harbour’s act by being able to call a halt to houseboat sewage discharging directly into its waters and remove the trot moorings that have proved so problematic for dinghy sailors within its confines.
The trust, which secured charitable status after a hard-won battle backed by the country’s top lawyer in the field, has as its aim:
“To preserve and enhance Bembridge Harbour, its approaches and setting, for the benefit of the public, including the users of the harbour and the communities of Bembridge and St Helens.”
Leading lights in the trust are Chris Attrill and his wife, Jill. They care passionately about the harbour.
The Attrill family has been in business in their boatyard since 1947 and involved with the harbour for many years before that.
The business was established by Chris’s grandfather and Chris and Jill’s son, Sam, is carrying on the family tradition.
Chris said: “The harbour is, quite simply, a nice place to be. We want it to stay that way. It is where we make our living.”
This is not the first time that a trust has been formed with the best of intentions. In the mid 90s one was set-up and tried to buy the harbour. It had the energy, but ran out of time to come up with the dosh.
What, eventually, transpired was that it passed into the hands of one Endon Barry Blatch.
That marriage between entrepreneur and harbour has not been a happy one. The trust wants a divorce and is prepared to provide a cash settlement.
The harbour, below high water mark, is owned by the Bembridge Harbour Improvement Company. Buildings and land that ring it belongs to Maritime and Leisure Investments.
The trust wants to buy the harbour outright and is confident that, even in these recessionary times, there is the backing out there for the assets belonging to Maritime and Leisure to be grasped by friendly hands.
Recession may, in fact, prove the trust’s greatest chum.
The lack of liquid commercial funds may mean that the trust will not face a clamour of private enterprise competition should the harbour and its environs find its way onto the market.
It was back in the 1960s that the trouble started after the British Railways Board decided it no longer wanted the harbour.
An Act made a sale possible but the way it was done ended the political career of the Island’s Tory MP Mark Woodnutt in the most extraordinary of election results. Our political complexion briefly turned orange as a result.
Things have been surprisingly turbulent for a safe haven for quite a bit of the time since then, with changes of ownership and development plans often coming to naught.
It is with the latest owner the trust is seeking a deal and he too has not been immune from controversy.
Mr Barry Blatch was a year ago made subject to a confiscation order at Portsmouth Crown Court for breaching a court order disqualifying him from running a company.
He is halfway through the two years he was given to pay £941,272 and faces five years in jail if he does not do so.
Unlike a fine, the debt will not be cleared by serving time.
Thereby hangs the trust’s hope of getting the harbour, if it can position itself in the wings, cash in hand.
But a spokesman for the Bembridge Harbour Improvement Company said: “Sale of the harbour is not being considered — for the foreseeable future.”
No-one foresaw recession a year ago.

Reporter: richardw@iwcpmail.co.uk