Civic Trust award angers creditors

Press, 23 April 1983, Page 9

Civic Trust award angers creditors

Creditors of the company developing Cranmer Court are angry that its principal, Mr C. J. Berryman, will receive a Civic Trust award. Several contractors who have worked on the complex are owed money by the company, Berryman Holdings, Ltd, in which Mr Berryman holds almost all of the shares. Two of them told “The Press” yesterday that they felt the creditors should have received some recognition for the project because, without their forbearance, the completion of the first stage would be impossible. Mr Berryman agreed with them, but was surprised at the reaction. One creditor, who preferred not to be named because he was “well down the line,” said that they were “not very thrilled” at the trust’s decision. It should have held off until the project was completed and the accounts cleared, he said. “Those historic people just looked at the face of the thing, not the background. That is what narked everybody.” : He said that if anyone was to get a medal, it should be the contractors who had “supplied a lot of money so far.”

Another creditor who also did not want to .be named, said that he was drafting a letter of complaint to the trust’s chairman, Mr Graeme Robertson. He would write that, because the company had “no show” of completing the first stage of the complex without the help of its creditors, they should have received a mention from the trust. “This is the feeling of all the people who are involved,” he said. Mr Robertson announced earlier this week that Mr Berryman, as principal of the company engaged in renovating the old Normal School building, had been granted an award for the project. It was, he said, “a reconstruction exercise ' of national significance” incorporating design standards of the very highest order. Mr Robertson yesterday dismissed the contractors’ “grizzlings” as “absolute rubbish.’” He said that the trust had been involved with the building since 1969 and that the financial troubles which might be besetting Mr Ber-

ryman were of concern at all to it in making awards. “In our dealings with Mr Berryman over the last two years, we have had complete confidence in him,” he said.

Mr Berryman said that he was pleased that the award had been made but that credit for the project might have been spread futher. “Everybody, but particularly those creditors who have been so reasonable in assisting us to see stage one right through, should be recognised,” he said. However, when the comments of the disgruntled contractors were reported to him, Mr Berryman said that he found them amazing.

“We are having discussions with most of them (the creditors) at the moment and they have never told us that they are angry. I get annoyed when people get irate without coming to me.”

Mr Berryman confirmed that he was negotiating the sale of stages two and three of the development and that one of the parties at the

table was the Paynter group of companies.

He said that he did not know when a deal would be settled, but he expected that it would be quite soon. “Everything is coming together but I can not announce the particulars until I have got everything set." Asked to reply to suggestions that the company was about to go into receivership, Mr Berryman said that it would not unless he chose to let it do so, and that was not his intention.

An independent lawyer had been appointed to act for the unsecured creditors, he said. “I felt that it was unfair to use ours to represent them.”

Mr Berryman would not disclose how many creditors he had or how much he owed them but said that discussions Were being held with most of them independently.

He confirmed that he had put his house at 66 Carlton Mill Road on the market and said that it would be auctioned unless a. buyer was found before the end of the month.