Britain's leading timeshare company, Barratt International Resorts Limited (Birl), is taking up to 200 of its owners to court in Scotland for refusing to pay disputed management fees.

At least 100 summonses have been issued at Inverness Sheriff Court against English owners who own timeshare weeks at Birl's four Scottish resorts, and up to another 100 against Scottish owners in their local courts, in an unprecedented attempt to recover more than #250,000 in unpaid fees.

The Herald revealed last year that owners have been in a bitter dispute with the company over a series of special levies to pay for refurbishing the luxury resorts.

But Birl, 50% owned by Scotland's most successful hotel group Macdonald Hotels, which manages all the resorts, has abandoned its own ombudsman scheme and refused to join the Organisation for Timeshare in Europe. OTE represents all the other leading UK resort companies and offers mediation in disputes.

Under pressure from owners, Birl recently published ''unaudited'' figures which showed that the cost of legal and debt collection fees across five of its resorts in 1999-2000 was a staggering #104,000. Last year's total outstanding debt is over #270,000, almost half of it at Loch Rannoch, where the unpaid fees are more than 8% of rental income. That compares with an acceptable level in the industry of 0.5% to 1%.

Macdonald Hotels, which last week won a Scottish Enterprise award as Scotland's fastest-growing company, this week reported a six-month #1m profit from the resorts, a rise of one-third on last year.

Retired solicitor Roger Willis, from Cumbria, is one of the 100 sued in Inverness, and has been protesting for three years. ''I have never been able to go back to Loch Rannoch and enjoy my week,'' he says. Willis, an owner for 25 years, is now barred for withholding his #350 normal fee plus a #390 ''millennium levy'' over three years, now extended with a further #100 levy over two years.

Willis says the the resort is supposed to be governed by the owners' committee, yet he is being sued by the management company (Birl), which, at the same time, does not allow the owners' committee full access to audited accounts, making it impossible to know whether the levies are fair.

Willis this week discovered that the case against him for #1500 has been dropped.

At Stirling Sheriff Court, a case being brought against Birl and the Forest Hills Club by Manchester-based owners David and Christine Abbot has reached the debate stage after a sheriff allowed their case to go forward. Birl have also launched a #50,000 action for damages against the couple after they set up a website for the Barratt Owners Group which attracted critical contributions from owners. The owners' group claims the support of over 1000 of Birl's customers.

Peter van der Mark, secretary-general of the Organisation for Timeshare in Europe, representing the companies which run most of the UK's 130 resorts, said this week: ''Birl are not members of our organisation. We have tried to persuade them to become members, because we believe it is in the interests of the timeshare industry. They have chosen not to be.''

He said OTE provided a mediation service for its members and their owners, and 85% of complaints

were sorted within two months.

Van der Mark said: ''We have tried to downplay the emotional feelings of a group of owners. We have spoken to Barratt and said we feel both sides need to get out of their trenches.''

OTE believed that if owners' committees had authorised expenditure at a resort, then it was probably legal, though there was clearly an issue of proper representation.

''We don't believe Birl has particularly excelled at commun-ication. They should take those complaints seriously and have a clear and transparent procedure.'' On similar problems elsewhere in the industry, van der Mark said: ''We can only actually think of this case.''

The Department of Trade and Industry is preparing new legislation on timeshare following a consultation exercise this year. It has said that, as well as pressure sales problems, it has been concerned about post-contractual complaints, adding that ''most of the complaints concern resorts owned by a particular developer''. Birl told The Herald in July it had ''no reason to think it was the company referred to''.

The OTE is among those calling for a strengthening of the position of owners, but it believes what is needed is a legal safeguard that the owners' committees are given access to audited accounts.

Birl has said that there is ''already substantial control over financial operations'' and management fees and special levies are only set after budgets have been approved by the owners' committees.

But at Birl resorts, owners' committees are presented with extracted accounts by auditors who state that they have ''no liability or responsibility to any other party'' (other than Birl) - even though it is the owners' committee which pays their (undisclosed) fees.

Sandy Grey of the Timeshare Consumers Association says: ''Most (other) clubs have an independent auditor of their own, separate from that of the management company.'' The average resort incurred legal fees of ''a few hundred or occasionally a few thousand pounds'', whereas Birl's legal costs were massive.

John Johnston, who has just stood down as chairman of the owners' committee at the Dalfaber resort, says: ''It is my view that the 15% factorial fee levied by Birl is a serious impediment to efficiency, as it rewards spending rather than promoting efficiency.''

Donald Macdonald, chief executive of Macdonald Hotels, responded this week: ''We have done a lot to the resorts in the midst of a lot of adversity. We will continue to see that programme through and bring the quality of the resorts up to the quality of all the other products we are developing.''

On the tactics used by Birl, Macdonald said: ''We have to do what we have to do . . . we inherited a lot of problems in that business. I believe we have brought in a lot of integrity and will continue going this route as humanely as we can.''

On why Birl was not a member of OTE, Macdonald said: ''That, in the past, has been driven by Barratt's attitude to the OTE. I think that doesn't close the door on us being part of it in the future.''

Birl said yesterday that late or non-payers were a very small percentage of the 30,000 members in its clubs and they were instructed by owners to pursue collection through the usual channels.

Timeshare Consumers Association. 01909-591100