For the past six months, the Cambrian News has been reporting on the slow decline and seemingly inevitable slide of local marinas into the financial abyss.

The same group of companies are responsible for running facilities in Port Dinorwic in Gwynedd, Aberystwyth, and at Burry Port in Carmarthenshire. The group also has interests in Cardiff and Watchet in Somerset. But ownership is not the sole common denominator. Sadly, these facilities are also suffering various levels of financial degradation.

But there is a common theme.

Hard-working staff at these facilities can never be sure if they are going to be paid at the end of the month. Many have left, others have soldiered on in dedication to the boaters who use the facilities and rely on their local knowledge and expertise.

Pensions have gone unpaid. For that alone, those who are responsible for the financial operations should, to use nautical terms, be morally keelhauled were that historic action still allowable. Certainly, through their actions — or in this case inactions — they should face the highest level sanctions, disbarred from being a director of any company in the United Kingdom. That is simply reprehensible.

For months, when this publication and others asked questions of Christopher Oldling-Smee, the Swiss-residing and sole director of Marina Group Limited, spun a web of words that are not worth a single iota.

Bills have gone unpaid. Rates have accumulated. And taxes have not been paid have they should. HMRC has initiated winding-up proceedings against the company in Aberystwyth, and other facilities in the chain are in various stages of similar legal processes.

Incidentally, as part of all this, Ceredigion County Council are owed £45,000 in rates. That alone raises questions. As any taxpayer in the county knows, a missed payment draws the attention of Ceredigion’s financial officers. Why then, in this case, have arrears been allowed to mount to that £45,000? Why was Ceredigion’s credit control policy so lax?

Never again should those associated with the failed projects, failed finances and failure to pay wages and pensions, be allowed anywhere near Companies House. Ever.