Feb 6, 2000
![[NCEEM]](nceem1.jpg)
By the start of 1998 the Waste Minimisation Project was becoming the major focus of KBF activities.
At the same time the Department for Education and Employment announced plans for a series of 120 "Centres of Excellence in IT and High Technology and Skills Challenge projects", to be up and running by March 1999. The centres were to help address skills shortage and would be "linked to an internet website to allow communication and dissemination of information and good practice". £60 million funding for the capital costs of the centres was available.
Iain Copping applied and was awarded £265,000 in April 1998. This was used to lever an additional £140,000 over 5 years from Keighley SRB for a "Virtual centre of Excellence for Environmental Management."
Amongst the "partners" on the project were Bradford University, Keighley College, Bradford TEC, Bradford Council, KADTAL, BT and Bradford Environmental Action Trust.
As John Dennis, who was involved in developing the project, explained to KDIS: "There was a need for somebody to pull together some stuff, to say 'well look, we can pass on information and dispense good practice', which is what KBF had been doing but on a much smaller scale. So that was how NCEEM started."
At the core of this was to be an national website, a "one stop shop" for the environment.
Most important of all, according to Dennis, was the fact that the new company NCEEM should not deliver any direct services, as the old Waste Minimisation project had done. "There were 2 things that were absolutely vital to NCEEM; one was that it was not-for-profit and the second was that it didn't deliver services, it didn't represent a threat to existing providers and businesses."
Moves to set up NCEEM began in mid 1998. A new Deputy Director of KBF, Elaine Pearson, was appointed. When NCEEM finally split she would take over what was left of KBF. New offices were also prepared in Cedar House and links established with, amongst others, the new Earth Centre in Doncaster.
For reasons that have never been adequately explained, 2 different companies were eventually set up to run NCEEM:
In April 1999 NCEEM officially split from KBF. Ian Copping set up a private Limited company - NCEEM Ltd - and he became one of 3 directors in the company. The other 2 were Michael Milner and Peter Hewitt.
Copping then resigned as a director of KBF.
Tim Parr, chairman of KBF told the Keighley News that the new company would be initially 100% owned by KBF and "other partners will put in cash and resources to obtain their shareholdings and it is likely that KBF will be left with 20% of the new company".
This company was formed 1 month later, as a not-for-profit company limited by Guarantee. It's 2 directors were Iain Copping and John Dennis - the environmental consultant from A H Leech Son & Dean.
It was this company that bought the "assets and business" of the Waste Minimisation programme from KBF for only £52,000.
According to director John Dennis, the first company, NCEEM Ltd, was set up "really just to get things going." He said there followed 2 big meetings about the structure of the new organisation.
"It quickly became apparent, and this was something I was particularly keen on, NCEEM was only ever going to work if it was a Not-for-profit company. That was the reason the second company had to be set up." He said the transfer of assets was handled by 3 sets of lawyers. "In effect the previous one was defunct to all intents and purposes. It was the not-for-profit one that was important".
It is quite likely that the assets which belonged to one not-for-profit company, namely KBF, could only be legitimately transferred to a company with a similar structure - hence the need for the 2nd company behind NCEEM. But Dennis's claim that the first, NCEEM Ltd, "was defunct" is not borne out by subsequent events.
Only £22,000 was ever paid towards the cost of the assets transfer, and this money came from the 1st company, NCEEM Ltd.
Almost all the trading thereafter was carried out through this private company. The 2nd not-for-profit company played no further part.
And even more bizarrely, when Companies House was finally informed in August 1998 of the issuing of 98 shares in NCEEM Ltd to Keighley Business Forum, the document was signed by John Dennis, as director. Yet he had never been a director of NCEEM Ltd - a company he claimed was by now "defunct".
At the hub of NCEEM was to be a prestigious environmental website. It was to be developed along the lines of a similar website for the Bio-technology industry called "BioFind". The new site would be developed by the same designers, KMP Internet of Stockport.
Developing the new NCEEM website, in particular "Envirospace" cost over £115,000. But what eventually appeared on the internet was a triumph of design over content. It may well be that what appeared on-line was only part of the intended whole. Certainly, following the collapse of NCEEM, KMP Internet appeared as the major creditor, owed £93,000. The NCEEM website disappeared shortly afterwards, but Envirospace still exists.
Within 8 months of it being set up, amidst great excitement for those involved, NCEEM suddenly collapsed. At a board meeting in November directors were told by Iain Copping that they were in danger of trading illegally, due to mounting debts. According to John Dennis, the rising costs of Envirospace were a major problem: "in the end it proved to be something of an Achilles heel in terms of the cash flow side of the business".
His own consultancy fees were also mounting. Despite bringing in a £100,000 landfill tax grant from the Greenbank Trust (a trust set up by his own employers A H Leech Son & Dean), he was left with unpaid invoices amounting to £33,000.
On November 22nd, 1999, both companies behind NCEEM were officially wound up with debts totalling over £400,000 and further potential liabilities which were to lead to the collapse, one week later, of Keighley Business Forum.