I'd have given it away for a quarter of tea Simon Bain investigates a timeshare where many unhappy owners are unable to sell their holdings

Roxburgh put the investment on the market through the site's sales office. Five years later, the timeshare week is still for sale.

Roxburgh, now 65 and recently widowed, cannot afford to pay the annual #289 management fee on her two-

bedroom unit for her week in

February. Now she is receiving demands from Barratt International Resorts Limited (BIRL) for #409 - including a #102 ''refurbishment levy''. Interest has already added #18 and court action is threatened.

She says: ''A lot of people bought it when their children were there, and now they are no longer there and they are pensioners like myself. My husband died last year and I just don't have that kind of money.''

She adds: ''I have been trying to sell it for the past five years, and I haven't even had a nibble. I would have given it away for a quarter of tea.''

The Barratt Owners Group says: ''Owners feel trapped by ever-

increasing management fees which make timeshare a more expensive option than a conventional holiday. They also feel locked in by the inability to re-sell.''

Sandy Gray, of the Timeshare Consumers Association, says: ''It is now even harder to sell Barratt weeks. An awful lot of Barratt owners put their names to the resale agents immediately after the levy came out.''

Andy Harris, of Timeshare Com-puter Link, agrees: ''There are more Barratts for sale now and the prices

are lower than they have ever

been before.''

There are 108 timeshare resorts in the UK, and the TCA estimates that of 330,000 timeshare owners as many as 100,000 of them are at any time actively trying to sell. As only 8500 sales were actually made last year, approximately one seller in 10 is likely to be able to exit timeshare and escape the annual fees.

BIRL offers a resale service for its owners, so Irene Roxburgh passed her week over to BIRL five years ago. But when last year Roxburgh asked a friend to inquire at the Forest Hills sales office about weeks for sale at this time of year, Roxburgh's week was not in evidence.

Despite the glut of sellers of weeks in existing blocks at Forest Hills, BIRL has built a new block where prices range from #6000 to nearly #10,000.

So two months ago BIRL ''revalued'' - upwards - all the weeks it has on

its books to resell for owners, ensur-ing that its new prices do not look

too expensive.

But at Aberfoyle, just down the road from Forest Hills, you can now buy the identical resale product from Time 2 Share - a company set up recently by former BIRL salesmen - rather more cheaply. A week selling at almost #7000 in BIRL's official list price

was being offered last weekend for #2750 in Aberfoyle. Other firms are offering #6000 weeks over the Internet for #1000.

Farmer Matthew Ferguson, 62, had enjoyed a quiet January week for 15 years, but was one of 250 disgruntled owners who descended on the resort's 1998 annual meeting last October to protest at the proposed levy, and the lack of democracy. ''They would not give us the mike. There had been a big build-up of unanswered letters and people were just so frustrated and were turning up from all over Britain just to have their say, and they couldn't do it. I was at the 1997 meeting and the levy was rejected on a massive show of hands. At that time it was #60. When the letters went out six months later, it had gone up to #87 (plus VAT) with no explanation.''

Ferguson says: ''We have a time-share holiday which we are trying

to enjoy, and I have paid my bill on time for 15 years. This is my week and I am barred.''

Further incidents are now likely, as angry owners arrive for their weeks determined not to back down.

At all six of Barratt's UK sites, including three others in Scotland, levies have been imposed because the ''sinking fund'' created from around 10% of the maintenance fees each year has run out of money. At Forest Hills, that means around #1m (at today's prices) should have been paid into the sinking fund since 1981. But just as an #800,000 refurbishment plan is being pushed through, the fund is #70,000 in the red. At the other BIRL sites owners are being asked to pay levies of anything from #140 to #400.

Under the management agreement Macdonald Hotels, joint owners with Barratt of BIRL and holding long-term management contracts for all its resorts, takes 15% of everything it spends, as a factorial fee. The more it spends, the higher the fee.

The Barratt Owners Group says that can act as ''an incentive to spend money not save it'', and claims that across the resorts the sinking funds are now more than #1m in debt. BOG also objects to the 15% fee being taken on the first day of the financial year, says management contracts are too long, and costings for the refurbishments are not transparent. The group was formed last year by Manchester couple David and Christine Abbott to campaign for a fair hearing for BIRL's 30,000 owners at four resorts in Scotland, two in

England, and three in Spain, after a build-up of complaints about lack of democracy and accountability.

Each site has a constitution which in theory gives power to the owners through a club committee. But while the constitution, at Forest Hills for instance, talks of a committee of five owners, in fact BIRL installs two managers and nominates the chairman. The chairman and two other owners stand for election or re-election every three years. But independent nominees have not been allowed to have their nomination circulated to owners, alongside the sitting member's nomination, before the annual meeting, but told they can only be nominated from the floor of the meeting.

For instance, at the last Forest Hills AGM attended by an unusually high 250, Christine Abbott defeated the

sitting member, Donald Davidson, five to one on a show of hands. But the chairman decreed that he had enough proxy votes for Davidson (sent from members who did not know there

was any other candidate). The votes were counted in a side room away from scrutiny.

David Abbott has proposed himself for election to the club committee at BIRL's Dalfaber holiday village, but has suffered a similar fate. BOG says there have been as many as 10 attempted nominations of independent owners for the committees at the six BIRL resorts since 1995. In every case, the sitting member has

been re-elected.

A similar phenomenon has occurred with the controversial levies.

At Forest Hills, BIRL failed to

tell owners that the levy had been rejected at the 1997 annual meeting and then imposed it in spite of 500 written objections. But when writing to owners last August the club committee chairman, a North-east businessman called Gerard Lyall, dismissed ''the minority who always seem to be complaining''.

Letters written to the committee's owner-members are passed straight to management. Yet Donald Macdonald, chief executive of Macdonald Hotels, has told BOG that his company is ''accountable only to the committee''.

Barratt responded yesterday: ''We are making substantial improvements to our UK resorts and a comprehensive refurbishment programme is under way. This programme will benefit all owners by ensuring that the resorts are maintained to the high standards required for top-quality destinations.

''The management of the resorts and the operation of the club committees are fully in accordance with the rules of their club constitutions. There are a small number of owners disgruntled with the additional costs. However, this is more than outweighed by the maj-ority who are supportive. All sinking funds in resorts are in credit. It is wrong to infer that the factorial system encourages expenditure.''

A substantial number of owners had removed their names from the (BIRL's own) resale list, which stood at only 2% of total ownership weeks, and over the past year the number of resales and their prices had increased. BIRL only charged a fee on completion of a sale.

''We totally reject the suggestion that there us any kind of 'hard on-the-day sell' associated with our resorts.''