A meeting of Visit London’s creditors is to be held next month, according to a notice in the London Gazette.
London’s now defunct official tourism agency was forced into administration earlier this year after City Hall pulled its funding and set up a new agency, London & Partners.
That decision left Visit London Limited (VLL) unable to meet its pensions liabilities or debts to commercial suppliers.
Pension scheme members faced the prospect of becoming reliant on the Pension Protection Fund for assistance while business creditors were at risk of receiving only a proportion of the sums owed.
In some cases services and assets which creditors were owed money for had been transferred to London & Partners without payment.
Visit London’s collapse sparked a political row at City Hall, with Mayor Boris Johnson coming under pressure from all London Assembly parties to find a resolution which ensured the wronged parties received the sums owed to them.
Johnson, who approved the decision to establish L&P and withdraw funding from VLL, subsequently admitted “things weren’t necessarily carried out with all the thought that they could have been”.
Audio: London Assembly Members quiz Mayor Boris Johnson over the collapse of Visit London (May 2011)
A rescue package was subsequently agreed between the Greater London Authority, the pension scheme trustees and the Pension Protection Fund which saw the GLA pay £6m into the pension fund and receive all outstanding assets of Visit London.
These assets are to be used to pay creditors who are owed around £2.5m plus administration and professional costs.
In July a London Assembly report said the decision to pull the plug on Visit London “was not sufficiently robust”.
The creditor’s meeting will take place on 11 October 2011, at 11.00 am. Full details are available here.
