RICHARD ATKINSON, the St Mirren director leading a proposed community takeover of the club, has admitted there have been mistakes along the way but hoped supporters would still back the proposal in sufficient numbers before the June 15 deadline.

A Community Interest Company hope to buy the 52% shareholding put up for sale by a group of directors, including chairman Stewart Gilmour, using a combination of soft loans, monthly contributions from members, and one-off payments.

Opponents of the project, including SMISA (the St Mirren Independent Supporters' Association), have criticised the CIC for not making enough information available for fans to make an informed decision. Atkinson, pictured, conceded it has not always been possible to be entirely transparent during the bidding process due to the presence of other potential buyers but hoped supporters would look beyond that to see the long-term benefits should the takeover go through.

Asked whether there had been insufficient information about the takeover plans put into the public domain, the Ayrshire businessman replied: "That's not an unfair criticism. If this was a normal fan-based takeover that was dealing with a disastrous scenario with a club, like what happened at Dundee, then, yes, we would have put everything out there and got everyone engaged.

"But since day one of my involvement, there has always been other parties showing interest. Some have made offers that have been rebuffed, some are still interested. So we have always been in a competitive situation and therefore there has always been a limit on the amount of information we have been able to put out.

"It has been a learning process for us. But we have had to teach people how CICs work, how boards work, how funders work, how we tie all this together. There have been flaws and we apologise for that. But we are doing our best. No-one is perfect. Hopefully, everything else will be forgotten once the deal is done and the supporters are placed at the heart of the club."

Should the takeover go through, the CIC members would control the new co-operative on the basis of one member, one vote. A recent re-jig of the proposals led to the formation of an 1877 club (for members in the 48% minority shareholding who own at least 1877 shares) whose members will also be able to stand for election to the football board. Atkinson, though, denied their presence would dilute the appeal of becoming a CIC member.

"Simply not true," he added. "The CIC would control 52% of the shares of St Mirren and is run on the basis of one member, one vote. The majority of directors on the board of St Mirren will always come from the CIC.

"The 1877 Club is nothing to do with the CIC other than funding it in the background. These people have committed a lot of money to the club in the past and deserve to have that recognised. The only thing that has changed in terms of the voting structure is that we have gone right back to what we have said on day one – the 48% shareholders of this club are just as much a part of this community, of this football club, as anyone else who joins the CIC. The change empowers the 48%. It is actually more democratic because it would then engage with the people who own the rest of the club's shares."

Changes announced last week by the Scottish Premier League mean that clubs will face sanctions if their parent company went into administration. Atkinson, though, moved to allay fears that St Mirren, if run by the CIC, could suffer such a fate.

"Yes, if the CIC as a parent company went into administration, there would be an issue. But for administrators to be called in, some creditor would have to do that," he said. "The key thing for the CIC is that it doesn't have a list of creditors. It doesn't have a list of 14 pages it owes money to.

"There is a single external funder, the consortium, and deferred creditors who are not owed any money until everybody else is paid. So the only person who would appoint an administrator is the funder. But they won't do that, they would just come in and sort it out themselves. With the way that the CIC is funded, with the way it is operated and designed, it is very difficult to foresee a situation where an administration event happened to the CIC such that that rule would come into play."