ENTREPRENEURS Avril Tait and Nigel Boyd, whose complaints over their treatment at the hands of former Business Ventures boss George Hammersley led to his sacking, are calling on Scottish Secretary Donald Dewar to help them get compensation from the Scottish Enterprise network.
Business Ventures, whose immediate parent organisation is Glasgow Development Agency, is part of Scotland's Government-funded economic development body.
Tait and Boyd, who invested their life savings in their Tartane children's clothing company and are left with major personal debts after it ceased trading, are seeking about #168,000 of compensation to allow them to re-start their business.
Hammersley was sacked more than 10 weeks ago after an independent investigation, by accountancy firm KPMG, of the couple's allegations that he stood to benefit personally from their brand and company.
Supposedly, he was helping them link up with their Glasgow-based manufacturer, LS Bennett, and securing funding to take the combined business forward.
The most damning evidence against Hammersley was the application he submitted, on December 22 last year, for public funding of a business plan which showed him as a 25% shareholder in a new company which would purchase the assets of Tartane and LS Bennett from liquidation.
This plan cut out Tait and Boyd, who Hammersley had been advising since last July. It was submitted without their knowledge and they had no intention of liquidating their business.
At the time, Hammersley was still supposedly assisting them to raise cash for an earlier plan which would have seen them own 31.2% of a company formed by the amalgamation of their cash-strapped business with that of LS Bennett.
Hammersley claimed he had been unaware of the contents of the second business plan when he submitted it to the Govan Initiative local economic development agency. He also claimed he was unfairly dismissed.
Scottish Enterprise's chief executive, Crawford Beveridge, has written to Tait and Boyd saying that Scottish Enterprise does not believe there is any case for it to offer compensation. Glasgow Development Agency, which Scottish Enterprise chairman Sir Ian Wood said in a letter to the couple had ''concluded that George Hammersley did not handle your case in a satisfactory manner'', has told Tait and Boyd that there was ''no contractual or other legal obligation in place between Tartane Limited and GDA''.
The couple's lawyer, Biggart Baillie, has now directed the compensation claim to Business Ventures itself but has received no response.
Tait has now been in touch with the Scottish Office, requesting that Dewar becomes involved personally.
Tait and Boyd's compensation claim comprises #118,000 of their savings which they invested in Tartane, about #30,000 owed to their creditors, and some #20,000 of personal debts which have been run up since December.
The pair, who gave up successful careers to start their own business, are having to live on unemployment benefits of #77-a-week.
Tait, who attended a six-month course run by Lanarkshire Development Agency for entrepreneurs five years ago, is astonished nothing is being done to help her re-establish Tartane given the very public political agenda of helping start-up businesses.
She said: ''This has always been a dream that one day I would be able to have my own company. We did everything with a view to building a very successful company in Scotland. Through what happened with Business Ventures, that has all been taken away from us and we can't get started again.
''The money we want back is to start again.''
While Tait and Boyd struggle, a company called Kydz has emerged from the liquidation of Trevor Bennett's LS Bennett business. Kydz appears to be pursuing the same strategy of selling children's clothing through parties as Tartane did.
It recently heralded its launch of a ''superb new party-plan range of children's casualwear'' in a newspaper advertisement for staff and is trading out of the Nitshill premises which LS Bennett occupied.
Kydz is being part-funded by TSB Bank Scotland, one of the potential funders to which Tait made a presentation at the time money was being sought for the original business plan.
Marion McKee, a franchising expert originally brought in by Hammersley to assist Tait and Boyd, is one of Trevor Bennett's three fellow investors in Kydz.
McKee yesterday denied that Hammersley had any involvement with Kydz and requested that The Herald did not get in touch with the company again.
She said: ''Mr Hammersley is not a director. He is not a shareholder and neither does he work here.
''I would be obliged if you would stop calling here. It is most unhelpful when people keep calling up.''
A spokeswoman for Scottish Enterprise said it was aware Tait had a claim against Business Ventures, ''a separate legal entity from Scottish Enterprise'', but that she was unable to comment on it because it was in the hands of Tait's and Business Ventures' solicitors.
A Scottish Office spokesman said it would reply to Tait in due course.
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