Worcester Warriors owners sell Sixways car park to themselves for just £50,000

Warriors’ owners Colin Goldring and Jason Whittingham made the purchase on August 17 as the future of club was in disarray over a multi-million-pound unpaid tax bill.

In a separate deal in June, the club’s training pitches were also sold to a newly created real estate company called Worcester Capital Investments Ltd, of which Goldring and Whittingham are both directors, for £350,000.

The Sixways site off the M5 in Worcester, including the car park and training facilities, had been independently valued at almost £17m.

The city’s Premiership rugby club is being threatened with administration over its outstanding tax bill – which is believed to be as high as £6m – after WRFC Trading Limited, the company running the club was handed a winding-up petition by HMRC.

The company’s accounts for 2021, which should have been published by the end of June, are now overdue but its books for 2020 showed it had still not paid £2.3m in taxes.

The same accounts also describe the planning potential for Sixways as having “significantly improved.”

The estimate includes the Sixways stadium which now belongs to Mq Property Ltd – a company of which Goldring and Whittingham are both directors.

Just one day after being hit by legal action, directors Colin Goldring and Jason Whittingham, who took over the club in December 2018, used Mq Property Ltd to buy the freehold for the club’s car parking using a loan from another company, Triangle Estate and Petroleum Ltd.

While not currently included in the winding-up petition, Mq Property Ltd now owns the majority of the land the club’s facilities sit on.

In recent months, Goldring and Whittingham have set up three new companies including Sixways Medical Limited, Sixways Property Limited and Sixways Stadium Limited.

In a statement earlier this week, the Warriors owners said they were “working through a number of options with advisors … including solutions for keeping rugby at Sixways.”