The talk of lack of transparency in the business of LRM does tend to focus attention on the accounts of LEL 2021 Ltd, and AUK. The LEL accounts are very abbreviated. In the end it's only the business of the directors to know the details, if surplus funds remain within the enterprise.
Which I'm more than happy to chat about. Our current forecast shows a surplus of around £45,000 on a budget of c. £900,000. However I've just had a quote for a control come in at around £10,000 higher than planned. I am comfortable with the current budget though at this stage it can fluctuate by more than the current forecast surplus.
All of our income comes from the riders, with a small, serendipitous bonus of commission from Transferwise. We take no cash from AUK or LRM. FB bankrolled our preparations from February 2019, paying for the website and publicity in Paris.
In 2017 we made a rather larger than expected surplus. This came as a rather pleasant surprise as the budget showed a tiny surplus of maybe £1,000 on the day of the event. I was personally very worried that I would be on the hook for the bills so was very relieved that this wasn't the case. What caused that surplus? It was partly the controllers who did their own catering coming in far lower than expected. It was also higher than expected sales of jerseys, for which we had a phenomenal rush near the end. But mostly it was an accounting error - we'd double counted staff costs for some controls and failed to spot the error.
Like almost every other event, we distributed most of the surplus to the controllers and kept about £20,000 in the bank for 2017 washup and 2021 planning. We paid an unexpected bill of £4,000 from LRM in 2013 which came about when the then chair of AUK neglected to tell us that LRM had jacked up their validation fees to 5 euros.
We still have various bits and pieces from previous LELs. Principally six laptops and associated barcode readers. If anyone wants those, get in touch, all items collection only. Likewise two films, with archive footage of 2013 and 2017, £7,500 each is a figure which comes to mind.
Heather and I had a chat about the surplus equipment. I told her that we didn't expect to see it again and that she was welcome to keep it. Feel free to sell it all on and feel free to keep the proceeds. We don't need any of it.