Report: Worcester owners sell Sixways car park... to themselves

With Worcester Warriors threatened with administration over an unpaid tax bill in excess of £6million, attention in recent days has switched to the curious selling off of some valuable club assets at Sixways to separate companies that involve Warriors owners Colin Goldring and Jason Whittingham.

The Gallagher Premiership club was last week issued with a winding-up petition by HMRC and it has now emerged that the day after this petition was issued, the Worcester owners sold the Sixways car park to themselves for just £50,000.

It was December 2018 when Goldring and Whittingham took over Worcester but it was only last week, after the winding-up petition was issued, that they used a company called Mq Property Ltd to buy the club car park’s freehold at Sixways.

According to the revelatory report published by Worcester News, this car park purchase was completed using a loan from another company, Triangle Estate and Petroleum Ltd.

This wasn’t the only facility sell-off as it also emerged that the club’s training pitches were sold last June to a newly created real estate company called Worcester Capital Investments Ltd. That sale was for £350,000 and both Goldring and Whittingham are directors at this new company.

These sell-offs will surely jar with Worcester supporters who fear for the club’s future as the entire Sixways site, including the training facilities and the car park, was allegedly independently valued at almost £17m.

Mq Property Ltd, which wasn’t included in the HMRC winding-up petition, now owns the majority of the land that the rugby club sits on, a situation that will worry anxious rugby fans as the 2020 set of published club accounts reported that the planning potential for Sixways had “significantly improved”.

In another development, Goldring and Whittingham also reportedly set up three other new companies - Sixways Medical Limited, Sixways Property Limited and Sixways Stadium Limited.

It was Monday when the Worcester club owners broke their silence on the winding-up petition, stating: “We continue to work closely with HMRC, Premiership Rugby, the RFU and DCMS to find the best solution to the situation.

“We are very grateful for the support these organisations have shown to the club. We are now working through a number of options with our advisors. These include solutions for keeping rugby at Sixways and we will communicate further as soon as a decision has been finalised.”

It then emerged on Tuesday that Jim O’Toole, the former Worcester CEO, was spearheading a takeover bid that was majority-backed by a USA company with additional support from Worcester businesses.