Why the reluctance?

Over the years we have pointed out the abject tardiness with which the ATT accounts have been filed by the trustees at the CAA. 2017 was the last year they submitted then within 90 days of year end as they are required to.

We had suspected the delays in recent years arose around getting an assurance from the government that the Treasury/Tax-payer would underwrite the scheme. The Thomas Cook failure all but wiped out the funds in the ATT and also the insurance provision, this we understand has not been replaced.

With the ATOL scheme taking no empirical or consistent account of risk and ATOL reform delayed yet again, it is easy to understand the reluctance to take on this burden given the ATT has only tens of Millions in it, to cover tens of Billions of potential liability.

The ATT’ s ‘Going concern’ statement, until this year, rested upon the ‘recent written assurance’ of the SOS for Transport that the government will back the scheme if it runs out of money. The most recent set of ATT accounts refers to a ‘written assurance’ without the promise of recency.

Via FOIR’s we asked to see the ‘recent written assurance’ which made the ATT and with it ATOL a going concern. This has been resisted by all means possible over many months, leaving only legal channels to get to the reassurance that this recent assurance existed.

Why the reluctance to share these ‘recent written assurances’, which are most clearly in the public interest, as they underpin the whole ATOL scheme?

Reform of ATOL – delayed as it’s ‘difficult’
Reform of ATOL is only ‘difficult’ if spending Client pipeline money as ‘working capital’ remains an option. Until this flawed principal is addressed the CAA will continue to struggle both with finalising reform and with management of the ATOL scheme. The CAA must insist on Trust or Escrow, as not doing so requires a complex analysis of risk and variable APC charges. The failure of Lux Tripper and others in October, within weeks of being granted a new ATOL licence, questions the CAA’s ability to evaluate risk when Client money is no longer there. The CAA should make their job simpler by ending the misappropriation of Client money which some Travel Organisers have come to rely upon.