Staff have now been paid too
The Wave in Bristol(Image: Global Shots)
Bristol’s inland surfing lake The Wave has reopened this morning (Tuesday), with its new boss describing its staff as ‘incredible’ for getting the facility up and running again. The Wave closed suddenly on Thursday after the company that ran it went into liquidation, but has been sold amid an increasingly bitter dispute among its shareholder companies.
Staff were told yesterday, Monday June 30, that the facility on the edge of Bristol would reopen at 6.30am today, Tuesday, July 1.
The first major event to take place at The Wave will be the English Para Surfing Open competition, a two-day national event which begins tomorrow, Wednesday, July 2. The event had been in doubt when The Wave closed suddenly last Thursday, with staff told to stay at home and given no confirmation when it would reopen.
But that reopening has come sooner rather than later, with the new interim chief executive Julian Topham thanking The Wave’s ‘community’ for their support. “Our incredible Wavemaker team has pulled together as always and been working flat out to get everything back up and running, and to be able to deliver surfs that have been booked,” he said.
“We are beyond excited that we will have waves rolling and people enjoying them again. We want to thank all our wonderful community for the outpouring of love and support over the last few days. It means so much,” he added.
“This also means that the eagerly anticipated English Para Surfing Open competition will be able to take place as planned on 2-3 July – and we can’t think of a better way to mark opening our doors again,” he said.
“We know there will be lots of queries about cancelled bookings over the last week. We will be working through all of these and will get in touch with those affected as soon as we possibly can. Thanks for bearing with us. See you in the water soon,” he added.
Mr Topham is the figurehead of a new company called Surf Bristol Ltd, which appears to have bought The Wave site from administrators who were called in back in April and had been looking for a buyer.
“It’s been a very stressful time,” said one of the surf facility’s 200 employees. “We obviously knew something was going on when it went into administration in April, but suddenly late on Wednesday everyone had a message saying they shouldn’t come into work tomorrow, Thursday,” he added.
The employee, who declined to be named, told Bristol Live that staff were left in the dark late last week, and had a second message on Thursday informing them not to come in to work again on Friday. Late last week, staff were told that the responsibility to pay for them for work in June was the responsibility of The Wave Bristol, the company that had run the facility, which did not happen. It wasn’t until late on Monday that staff were paid by the new owners.
READ MORE: The Wave closes suddenly as surf facility battles debt and administrationREAD MORE: The Wave Bristol surfing lake is sold as police called in
But the sale and the circumstances surrounding the administration, closure and reopening are controversial, with The Wave Bristol’s previous largest shareholder claiming what has happened to the business has effectively been a set-up, pre-planned and designed to ‘grab’ the business from them at a reduced price.
The complex web of companies and shareholdings that were running the site and employing the staff, and were struggling to pay off the estimated £15 million are now split acrimoniously, with one accusing the other.
The business which had owned and managed the site was called The Wave Group. That went into administration back in April, a move which saw the man who founded and ran the project – Nick Hounsfield – forced out.
Its majority shareholder was a London-based investment firm called Sullivan Street Partners, which had taken on a large share of the millions of debt it took to build The Wave itself and get it through Covid.
Sullivan Street Partners said it had invested and grown the business over the past three years, but when a minority shareholder, called JAR Wave, went into administration, it took The Wave Group with it.
The Wave in Bristol(Image: Image Cabin)
Since then, administrators have been involved in restructuring the company, overseeing the departure of Mr Hounsfield and saying they are offering the site up for sale. Things came to a head late last week.
On Thursday, the administrators closed down The Wave giving staff no warning, and said the site had gone into ‘technical insolvency’. At the same time, Sullivan Street Partners said they were working on a refinancing deal of their own, which would have taken The Wave back out of administration and got it reopened.
Sullivan Street Partners said on Friday they had been close to sorting that out, so that The Wave would be able to reopen on Saturday, only to discover that the administrators BTG had sold The Wave from under them to a new consortium.
“These actions have unnecessarily removed the business from the staff and majority shareholder Sullivan Street Partners, which have built and grown the park over the last three years,” a spokesperson for Sullivan Street Partners said.
“A previous minority shareholder and individuals associated with the shareholder chose to pursue personal returns, significantly acting out of step with their moral and fiduciary duties,” they alleged.
“The sequence of events, in immediate hindsight, now appears to have been long planned to undermine all efforts to deliver a full refinance in an orderly fashion.
“Instead, issues have been raised over the past month and over the last several hours, specifically aimed at achieving the goal of grabbing the business at an undervalue and prejudicing other creditors in the process,” they claimed.
According to Sullivan Street Partners, they still own ‘The Wave’ name, so if or whenever the surfing park does reopen, the new owners won’t be able to call it ‘The Wave’.
(Image: Nick Hounsfield)
Sullivan Street Partners also said they have called the police after they were the victim of a cyber attack at the same time all this was going on.
Sullivan Street Partners allege assets associated with The Wave park have been ‘appropriated illegally with systems being hacked and frozen’. “We have simultaneously been the victim of a cyber attack with all data having been stolen – this may or may not be connected to the other assaults on the company,” a spokesperson said.
“The latter has also meant customers could not be contacted to make them aware of the potential compromise to their data. The police have been informed,” they added.
Sullivan Street Partners claimed that at 5.57pm on Friday, Jun 27, they were ready to announce the reopening of The Wave the next day, Saturday, only to discover that the site had been sold, so reopening it was ‘no longer possible’.
Sullivan Street Partners had been the London investment firm that Nick Hounsfield brought in to expand The Wave to other locations around the country, including one in London itself.
The investment company said it still planned to do that, under The Wave brand. “The Wave Group remains on track to open an amazing site in London in 2027 and has several other opportunities under development,” a spokesperson said.
“Whilst this is very disappointing to see a site we have built brick by brick over the last ten years face this disruption, we are mostly sorry for the upset the actions of others have caused for Wavemakers and clients of The Wave,” she added.
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