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Boat Fitter NOT going out of business


ditchcrawler

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You may have read in the latest well known canal magazine that Kingsground Boat fitters have gone into administration. Kingsground have posted on their FaceBook page that this is not correct and they are still open for business. I have copied their posting below for those of you that don't do FB.

 

Waterways World March 2013 issue have incorrectly printed that Kingsground Narrowboats are no more. What a shocker of a morning! We are still very much still here and have spent the winter investing time and money in to relocating from Upper Heyford to Enslow Marina. We have changed our number to 01869 351321 and our new chandlery opens ready for the spring in just a few weeks time.

 

It's unfortunate that Waterways World did not email or call us before heading to print. It's even more unfortunate that they got their information unreliably.

 

It's hard enough at the moment for boat builders and it's sad to think that over the years we have spent thousands and thousands of pounds with WW and it comes to this but onwards and upwards :0) from the KG team

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If it's not true if it was me I'd be inclined to take legal action against WW, totally irresponsible in the extreme not to check their facts - goodness knows how much business that could have cost KG who IMHO build very nice NB's...

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I am puzzled by their statement that they are moving from Upper Heyford to Enslow - surely they have always been at Enslow Wharf?

Don't like their boats much, but lots of people do and I'm pleased to hear that they are thriving.

To be fair to WW, they do say "Reports have come in" about Kingsground (although since they thought the firm might have closed last October, I'd have thought they would have had time to check). On a positive note I was impressed to see that they were quick off the mark in covering the sale of the Admiral nelson pub at Braunston.

Edited by Athy
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I am puzzled by their statement that they are moving from Upper Heyford to Enslow - surely they have always been at Enslow Wharf?

Don't like their boats much, but lots of people do and I'm pleased to hear that they are thriving.

To be fair to WW, they do say "Reports have come in" about Kingsground (although since they thought the firm might have closed last October, I'd have thought they would have had time to check). On a positive note I was impressed to see that they were quick off the mark in covering the sale of the Admiral nelson pub at Braunston.

 

 

 

 

"Reports have come in" "alleged"

 

Use these before any claim you make and you're basically untouchable.

 

A bit sillly though upsetting a potential advertiser, I suspect he might get a freebie, let's hope so anyway.

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I am puzzled by their statement that they are moving from Upper Heyford to Enslow - surely they have always been at Enslow Wharf?

Don't like their boats much, but lots of people do and I'm pleased to hear that they are thriving.

To be fair to WW, they do say "Reports have come in" about Kingsground (although since they thought the firm might have closed last October, I'd have thought they would have had time to check). On a positive note I was impressed to see that they were quick off the mark in covering the sale of the Admiral nelson pub at Braunston.

 

I wondered this too. Kingsground have certainly been at Enslow Wharf for the last few years, but if you want to buy diesel you have to phone the mobile number and the chap (Richard IIRC) turns up to sever you after a wait of six or seven minutes so they clearly have another site too.

 

But Ditchcrawler's post says 'Enslow Marina'. Is Enslow Wharf being rebranded upmarket and pretending to be a marina now?!

 

Can you clarify please DC? And I never realised you worked at Kingsground. Or are you Richard?!

 

And what is Kingsground's connection with Upper Heyford?

 

Ok too many questions, probably.... :)

 

 

MtB

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It does sound bad that they didn't check the story. The statement that it was due to "reports coming in" doesn't excuse what they shoudl have done to confirm the reports. It would have only taken a phone call.

 

Glad to here Kingsground are still up and running.

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I wondered this too. Kingsground have certainly been at Enslow Wharf for the last few years, but if you want to buy diesel you have to phone the mobile number and the chap (Richard IIRC) turns up to sever you after a wait of six or seven minutes so they clearly have another site too.

 

But Ditchcrawler's post says 'Enslow Marina'. Is Enslow Wharf being rebranded upmarket and pretending to be a marina now?!

 

Can you clarify please DC? And I never realised you worked at Kingsground. Or are you Richard?!

 

And what is Kingsground's connection with Upper Heyford?

 

Ok too many questions, probably.... :)

 

 

MtB

I do apologies if I have thrown this thread off track by using the wrong word, How about "Boat parking place" I was just trying to say that Kingsground say they are not going out of business in case anyone had read the report in WW

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We had our boat repaired at Enslow in 2011 also we moored her there for a month as my partners father was seriously ill.

I think I tweeted about it.

The boat building was not there at the time.

Andrew Denny rang me coz he'd seen my Tweet - apparently someone was assuming they'd gone bust as they were'nt answering the phone. He'd sent Maffi down to Enslow who reported back that no boats were being built there and there was no one about. I put him straight - before we paid and left there, Richard had told me how 1. The boats were built at an old aircraft hanger elsewhere. 2. He was planning to move the operations to the wharf.3. He was going on holiday soon so wouldn't be contactable.4. He admired our reasonable amateur paintjob and offered my partner a job painting boats.

So. What is it with people jumping to conclusions again? Seems all that Richard is done is to carry out his plans.

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We had our boat repaired at Enslow in 2011 also we moored her there for a month as my partners father was seriously ill.

I think I tweeted about it.

The boat building was not there at the time.

Andrew Denny rang me coz he'd seen my Tweet - apparently someone was assuming they'd gone bust as they were'nt answering the phone. He'd sent Maffi down to Enslow who reported back that no boats were being built there and there was no one about. I put him straight - before we paid and left there, Richard had told me how 1. The boats were built at an old aircraft hanger elsewhere. 2. He was planning to move the operations to the wharf.3. He was going on holiday soon so wouldn't be contactable.4. He admired our reasonable amateur paintjob and offered my partner a job painting boats.

So. What is it with people jumping to conclusions again? Seems all that Richard is done is to carry out his plans.

 

Indeed, I thought it was pretty common knowledge that Kingsground started in and continued to fit their boats out in the old Upper Heyford Airbase fire station. They were on our list of potential builders when we had NB Earnest built, way back in 1999. They are superbly fitted boats. Even back then Richard and Clive said they wanted to get canal side site and eventually move production there. This seems to be a case of the towpath telegraph having some down time...or getting ahead if itself?

A quick Google would have confirmed where they fit out their boats!

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I can see where the rumours may have come from and WW thinking it may be true as the companies house records show the company as dissolved in October last year.

 

You would have thought at least that they would have tried to contact people before printing the story though.

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Hi to all that have posted, there's so many queries and we obviously want to get them cleared up after today's incident so hopefully this shall answer all of the points or questions raised but if we miss anything out, just let us know.

Back in 2010 we considered turning the business Ltd from a partnership but after some more thought we remained as a partnership and therefore dissolved the Ltd company name with Companies House as it has never traded and we shall never use it. This business name was not in any way linked to the partners of Kingsground or attached to the business address so it would take a degree of imagination to link it to us because it could have been any third party that incorporated the name.

 

Waterways World noticed the above and made and assumption, they then headed to press with no phone call, email, fax, letter or text. This was quite a shock and though there's no good time for anything like this to happen, over the winter we have been preparing the re-structure of the business. As some of you already know, for 17 years we have been building our 112 boats from Building 103 Heyford Business Park, Upper Heyford, Oxon, it's situation on the old American Air Base and has been our home for so long that we were heartbroken when the consortium released their housing plans for the base. Our building will remain on the site and become the Heritage Centre. As the oldest building in site it makes so much sense that her future will be telling the history of the base. There's been lots of plans for the building over the years, one set of plans stated she may become a public house called 'The Boat', but those plans never did come to fruition and though we has planning to set up at the Wharf, we got so wrapped up in building boats that we always said 'tomorrow' and tomorrow never came! Until recently when the plans of the heritage site became final and we were finally given official notice.

 

So we are now at Enslow and both operations run from the one site which means we can be by the water enjoying watching the boats go by. It has so many upsides but we still desperately miss building 103, it's where we made made memories, built boats, created dreams, made friends, had happy days and tough. All businesses from time to time have to look at what they're doing and invest time into a restructure if necessary and we saw that this was a good time for us to do just that. We have weathered the storm that is the financial climate but times are not easy for boat builders and it was important that we took this opportunity to offer the services that customers have been demanding. There's a real 'make-do and mend' feel to life now and we have more call for repairs and re-paints than new builds and we would like nothing more than to focus on giving your pride and joy a tickle with the paintbrush! Saying that, we're not wanting to call it a day at 112 crafts .. We love building, it's our passion and we know in time the enquiries shall come flooding back. We realise that compared to many boat builders we are highly fortunate to have other baskets to put our eggs in. We have already lost so many boat builders over the last few years and that leaves us feeling very sad because many of those are losses to the industry.

 

We are really looking forward to our future, we had wanted to re-launch ourselves in Spring, updating you all on our new plans regarding the services we will be offering, the chandlery etc but we find ourself, a little ahead of time, explaining. It appears from reading through the thread that Andrew has been doing some digging for a little while, lots of customers have mentioned now that they had been questioned by him. It's sad really because he only had to ask!

 

We hope this answers pretty much all of your queries but if not please just say and we shall do our very best to reassure you of our position. On the comment made earlier about Enslow Wharf/Marina, it's correct that we have to use the word marina. We have always been Enslow Mill Wharf but it causes confusion for a business located just by the wharf and we were advised that once the boat building was relocated we should use 'marina'. It does make us sound much bigger than we are because as many of you know we have the capability to moor approx 60 boats and it's more of a small community than a big marina!

 

Kind regards

The Kingsground Team

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Hi to all that have posted, there's so many queries and we obviously want to get them cleared up after today's incident so hopefully this shall answer all of the points or questions raised but if we miss anything out, just let us know.

Back in 2010 we considered turning the business Ltd from a partnership but after some more thought we remained as a partnership and therefore dissolved the Ltd company name with Companies House as it has never traded and we shall never use it. This business name was not in any way linked to the partners of Kingsground or attached to the business address so it would take a degree of imagination to link it to us because it could have been any third party that incorporated the name.

 

Waterways World noticed the above and made and assumption, they then headed to press with no phone call, email, fax, letter or text. This was quite a shock and though there's no good time for anything like this to happen, over the winter we have been preparing the re-structure of the business. As some of you already know, for 17 years we have been building our 112 boats from Building 103 Heyford Business Park, Upper Heyford, Oxon, it's situation on the old American Air Base and has been our home for so long that we were heartbroken when the consortium released their housing plans for the base. Our building will remain on the site and become the Heritage Centre. As the oldest building in site it makes so much sense that her future will be telling the history of the base. There's been lots of plans for the building over the years, one set of plans stated she may become a public house called 'The Boat', but those plans never did come to fruition and though we has planning to set up at the Wharf, we got so wrapped up in building boats that we always said 'tomorrow' and tomorrow never came! Until recently when the plans of the heritage site became final and we were finally given official notice.

 

So we are now at Enslow and both operations run from the one site which means we can be by the water enjoying watching the boats go by. It has so many upsides but we still desperately miss building 103, it's where we made made memories, built boats, created dreams, made friends, had happy days and tough. All businesses from time to time have to look at what they're doing and invest time into a restructure if necessary and we saw that this was a good time for us to do just that. We have weathered the storm that is the financial climate but times are not easy for boat builders and it was important that we took this opportunity to offer the services that customers have been demanding. There's a real 'make-do and mend' feel to life now and we have more call for repairs and re-paints than new builds and we would like nothing more than to focus on giving your pride and joy a tickle with the paintbrush! Saying that, we're not wanting to call it a day at 112 crafts .. We love building, it's our passion and we know in time the enquiries shall come flooding back. We realise that compared to many boat builders we are highly fortunate to have other baskets to put our eggs in. We have already lost so many boat builders over the last few years and that leaves us feeling very sad because many of those are losses to the industry.

 

We are really looking forward to our future, we had wanted to re-launch ourselves in Spring, updating you all on our new plans regarding the services we will be offering, the chandlery etc but we find ourself, a little ahead of time, explaining. It appears from reading through the thread that Andrew has been doing some digging for a little while, lots of customers have mentioned now that they had been questioned by him. It's sad really because he only had to ask!

 

We hope this answers pretty much all of your queries but if not please just say and we shall do our very best to reassure you of our position. On the comment made earlier about Enslow Wharf/Marina, it's correct that we have to use the word marina. We have always been Enslow Mill Wharf but it causes confusion for a business located just by the wharf and we were advised that once the boat building was relocated we should use 'marina'. It does make us sound much bigger than we are because as many of you know we have the capability to moor approx 60 boats and it's more of a small community than a big marina!

 

Kind regards

The Kingsground Team

 

Nice post, good luck with the business. I think you should receive some free advertising from Waterways World in way of an apology ;)

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The Denny Dread strikes again. (I thought he was minding the executive toilets at CRT these days?)

 

Obviously working on the idea of not letting the truth get in the way of a good story. Reminds me of the IWA National at Redhill when we were moored above the lock and therefore quite a way from the festival site. We had decided to change the batteries on our boat and we arranged with the supplier (who had a stand at the Festival) that he would deliver the new batteries to our boat the following morning and we would fit them and leave the old ones behind a pedestal under the road bridge where they would collect them the next day. When we returned home to a good internet signal I found that Mr Denny had waxed lyrical on his blog about those dreadful boaters who left batteries under bridges. He even included a photo of the nice yellow batteries! I sent him a message explaining the situation but did he change his story? No!

We felt a little peeved especially as my husband was harbour master on that stretch and had allowed Mr Denny to moor at the end of our moorings at no charge.

A case of the truth not getting in the way of a good story, methinks :-)

 

haggis

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Obviously working on the idea of not letting the truth get in the way of a good story. Reminds me of the IWA National at Redhill when we were moored above the lock and therefore quite a way from the festival site. We had decided to change the batteries on our boat and we arranged with the supplier (who had a stand at the Festival) that he would deliver the new batteries to our boat the following morning and we would fit them and leave the old ones behind a pedestal under the road bridge where they would collect them the next day. When we returned home to a good internet signal I found that Mr Denny had waxed lyrical on his blog about those dreadful boaters who left batteries under bridges. He even included a photo of the nice yellow batteries! I sent him a message explaining the situation but did he change his story? No!

We felt a little peeved especially as my husband was harbour master on that stretch and had allowed Mr Denny to moor at the end of our moorings at no charge.

A case of the truth not getting in the way of a good story, methinks :-)

 

haggis

I would not list investigative as one of the dreads skills, I must admit.

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Obviously working on the idea of not letting the truth get in the way of a good story. Reminds me of the IWA National at Redhill when we were moored above the lock and therefore quite a way from the festival site. We had decided to change the batteries on our boat and we arranged with the supplier (who had a stand at the Festival) that he would deliver the new batteries to our boat the following morning and we would fit them and leave the old ones behind a pedestal under the road bridge where they would collect them the next day. When we returned home to a good internet signal I found that Mr Denny had waxed lyrical on his blog about those dreadful boaters who left batteries under bridges. He even included a photo of the nice yellow batteries! I sent him a message explaining the situation but did he change his story? No!

We felt a little peeved especially as my husband was harbour master on that stretch and had allowed Mr Denny to moor at the end of our moorings at no charge.

A case of the truth not getting in the way of a good story, methinks :-)

 

haggis

 

I think he was after a scoop...seeing as all the rest of the news in WW is old news!

I only get "Narrowboat" now, but Mrs TNC has carried on with WW. The Kingsground news item was the only thing she brought up in conversation that surprised me.

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Well I'm glad you got that all sorted...

We still have a few Kinver Canopies / are you wilsons / no we are not ! Problems. We have found this forum a great place to correct people, we also find many kind members have helped with our course by correcting the misled thoughts of the few who don't know.

 

Keep up the good work.

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