Horse & Country TV chairman sues over horse theme park
Chairman of Horse & Country TV Heather Killen is suing the entrepreneurs behind ill-fated plans to create a horse theme park in Warwickshire.
A £60 million attraction, named Horseworld, was planned for Stoneleigh Park, the home of the British Equestrian Federation (BEF) (news, 16 August 2007).
But the project did not get off the ground and Ms Killen alleges she was not paid.
She is claiming £430,000 in expenses and fees from the companies Horseworld and Horseworld (UK) and their directors Toby Vincent and Richard Worrall.
According to a High Court writ, Ms Killen was employed as a consultant and chief executive of the project from February 2007 to August 2008.
Her work included a £25,000 launch at Badminton Horse Trials in 2007 and an application for the centre to be part of an FEI academy.
But she claims she was not paid her £2,000-a-day fee, nor nearly £60,000 in expenses.
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Neither Ms Killen nor Messrs Worrall and Vincent wished to comment on the court case.
Horseworld remains listed at Companies House, but it is not clear if the project is still active.
The park would have been part of the BEF’s long-planned National Equine Centre at Stoneleigh, which may still go ahead, BEF chief executive Andrew Finding told H&H last month (news, 23 September).
A date for the hearing has not yet been set.
This article was first published in Horse & Hound (14 October, ’10)
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A self-confessed newshound, farmer’s daughter and journalist of many years' experience, Charlotte worked on regional papers before joining H&H in 2007. A regular rider, she visited Ireland in 2010 to investigate the fate of Irish horses through the recession, to much acclaim, and reported from the FEI General Assembly in Rio de Janeiro in 2011. She left Horse & Hound in March 2013.