Sparkford Hall

My work collegues have had an on going issue with this venue which goes back as far as 2019: Initially We booked the venue for 2×7 days in 2019 (July and September). During our stay we had a lot of security issues around fire safety, electricity, plumbing etc which our staff repaired for the venue ... in order to make the place workable for our event and safe for our participants. After our event we were promised a refund of our housekeeping deposit which never arrived so we requested the owed money to be discounted against our future bookings. Additionally on arrival we discovered that we couldn’t use a promised outside practice space in a large tent, as it was flooded. Sparkford Hall didn't notify us about the issue before our arrival and was not able (or even tried) to fix the issue during our stay. However, our main issue is not with the above but with our 2020 bookings. We booked the venue for July and September 2020 and paid a deposits (50% per booking) on both reservations. The September booking was cancelled by the venue because they mis-planned construction works. Only half of our deposit was refunded in January 2020 after a lot of chasing. The July booking was cancelled due to Covid – although events could still happen during this time according to social distancing planning. The venue closed down completely and cancelled our booking on short notice (May 2020). Leaving us needing to find a venue at the last minute and adapt our safety plans around COVID for the new location. Our deposit was not refunded at notification of cancellation. After chasing the venue over months, we eventually reached an agreement in August 2020 to receive the remaining money in 2 payments in October and December 2020. In November there was no payment and no one from the venue contacted us, when we chased the venue again without success. Our last contact with the business manager of Sparkford Hall at the time, was in January 2021 with a lot of excuses and no further offers or suggestions to pay us back. Finally in May 2021 we received an email from an insolvency agency, informing us off the insolvency of the company Sparkford Hall. The outstanding claim Sparkford Hall communicated to the insolvency company, was about a third of the actual outstanding payment of our claim. We are now listed as creditor in the insolvency campaign - so far without any returns. It has been communicated to us, that the former business manager of Sparkford Hall, the main person responsible for not refunding the open payments listed himself as creditor in the insolvency process, which prevents actual creditor to be paid back accordingly.

I have booked this venue a very long time ago for an event, which got cancelled due to pandemic. We agreed to postpone it to a year later however restriction rules continued and we had to cancel it again. Than I asked for a refund as did not wanted to wait another year however they ... said they can not give me a refund, which I know now that they should have according to UK law. I asked them a date which we can do something small in return of the deposit I have paid, they agreed. Now it is one month before the gathering they have been avoiding my calls and they have send me an email saying they can not held my gathering anymore without giving any reason. I now hired a lawyer to be able recoup all the expenses, I have already paid them and caterers etc.. This is really unacceptable... Only give one star to be able to write a review.. they should be -100 stars after this attitude.