Ware Online Community Forum

Hertford Regional College (a name I've never understood as they have no presence in Hertford, it seems designed to irritate Ware people) is currently unloved in Ware due to their vandalism of several beautiful mature trees on Scotts Road as part of yet another building project.

They are also, it seems, in dager of losing a large sum of money in Saudi Arabia! I read about htis in Private Eye, and then looked it up a bit. HRC is part of Hertvec, a consortium which won a bid to run FE provision in Saudi Arabia in 2014. Former Chief Exec, Dr Ian baird, who was only appointed a year ago, now says that:

“The size and complexity of this project could actually cause British state-funded colleges to go bankrupt, as they incur costs without getting paid for the resources they are providing.” http://feweek.co.uk/2015/12/04/bankrupt ... -ventures/ The report adds that "Education Investor reported that Hertvec, for example, won a £225m five-year deal to run three colleges in 2014, but added that its “numbers are understood to be well below target”."

Concerns about costs had been raised in November 2014 at the HRC board (http://www.hrc.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads ... 111214.pdf), which minuted:

"Saudi Project.
After meetings between HRC & NHC Governors it’s been agreed to establish a joint Project Scrutiny Panel , with a first meeting scheduled for January. Based on applications so far it is anticipated that there will be an increase in student enrolments for Trimester 2 to around 450 (70% female). A new CEO – Dr Ian Baird – started in November and has been joined by a new CFO – Nick Brien. Both have experience at senior management level in working on COEfunded projects in KSA in the last two years. Work is progressing on refining the business plan, reducing costs, managing the mobilisation loans to ensure positive cash-flow and drawing up a Shareholder’s Agreement based on legal advice from Mills & Reeves. The Board of HERTVEC LLC is due to have its first meeting on 15th December 2014. Desdra Kingdon advised that she had met with Andrew Clare in order to agree costs that he will now take to the Board of Hertvec so that the College can be reimbursed. The Scrutiny Panel will oversee things in future although the Panel did not include membership from Samama. The meeting between Governors of both Colleges had revealed that NHC had 3 Governors with
relevant experience and expertise of working in Saudi Arabia and that NHC was approaching the project with a different purpose to that of HRC and that they were less concerned with making money. It was confirmed however, that the NHC Governors do now see the need for tighter control of the project."

Interesting that North Herts College doesn;t care (according to HRC) about losing money on the project but for HRC it's supposed to be a money spinner.

The next minutes then say just this:

"1338. To Receive an Update on the Saudi Arabia Project.
It was agreed that this item should remain confidential due to commercial sensitivity." http://www.hrc.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads ... 260315.pdf

I guess things werent going to well back in the Spring, and clearly the FE Week is convinced they are definitely not going well now.
I wonder what the latest minutes will say when they become available sometme next year. Perhaps the Mercury should do a story on this, they would have time to investigate fully, which I don't. But it would be a good story - is our local FE college going bust because of a business venture in Saudi Arabia?

mb1 wrote:Hertford Regional College (a name I've never understood as they have no presence in Hertford, it seems designed to irritate Ware people) is currently unloved in Ware due to their vandalism of several beautiful mature trees on Scotts Road as part of yet another building project.

Unloved in Scott's Road maybe (but then were they ever loved there) in my experience the people of Ware don't care unless it affects them directly, I doubt most have even noticed.

So far as the vandalism is concerned, the developers are simply proceeding on the basis of the permission granted by planning.

Well, I live on the unfavoured and downtrodden north side, and it bothers me when an attractive section of town is vandalised. And having planning permission doesn't mean it isn;t vandalism. A row of mature trees has been cut down exposing the ugly campus of a college that can't even bring itself to be associated with the name Ware. Although that part of the post was just an aside to take a dig. The main point was wondering how many millions they're losing in Saudi Arabia.

Apparently the planning games are not done yet - I heard that the developer Persimmon has applied for permission to insert two more 'apartments' on the ground floor, at the expense of parking spaces for residents. It seems that as the site is so close to the station and bus stops that the owners won't need cars, so don't need to have anywhere to park them.

Which planet are these people on?

It's unfortunate that the O/P chose to conflate two issues, but I'll focus on the offshore exploits of HRC, which is the subject of the discussion.

Can anyone tell me what the constitution of the college is? Is it a part of the local education authority? Or of the District Council? Where does it get it's funding and what are it's aims?

Frankly, anyone who does business in Saudi has questions to answer, especially given the growing instability of the country, both political and financial.

HRC should be focusing on its core operations rather than some folly in the Middle East.

The government has apparently been encouraging FE colleges to launch business ventures across the world, hoping that commercial revenue will allow further deep cuts in government funds for those colleges. It seems that HRC is getting its fingers burned trying the same thing, and that once they got into real trouble they stopped puting details in the minutes of meetings.

Yup that makes sense. Everything has to be a business nowadays. We don't have services anymore.