The providers of a temporary winter ice rink have been accused of creating a financial black hole and failing to contribute any promised funding to its hosts Strawberry Hill House.

Twickenham Alive, whose management of the project came under fire earlier this year when it was revealed teenage workers had not been paid months after the rink closed, have been accused by their former partners of poor management that resulted in the rink losing thousands of pounds.

Stadium Support Services (SSS), run by Kevin Hudson, were shareholders in the Richmond Rink project, which was open from December 5, 2015, until January 31, 2016 and sold more than 6,000 tickets.

SSS and Twickenham Alive are also involved in a copyright dispute, after SSS made a planning application to open the rink once again at Strawberry Hill House this winter using what appeared to be the same design as the previous year.

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Strawberry Hill House

Mr Hudson said his organisation lost thousands and blamed poor financial management by Twickenham Alive.

Berkley Driscoll, from Twickenham Alive, accepted the venture lost money but pointed to adverse weather conditions and issues with an acoustic enclosure that caused a number of problems including a loss of ice.

He said Twickenham Alive personally subsidised the rink’s losses and his colleague Teresa Read had put up £12,000 of her own money to ensure the project’s future.

Mr Driscoll said: “Making a profit has never been the goal. It has been about making this popular and important community event happen.

“We believe it is possible for the rink to at least break even and even make a profit.

“Any profit would go to improving the facilities for future rinks. We have committed to the long term and believe that a community rink in Twickenham is sustainable.”

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Skating on the rink in 2014

Twickenham Alive has also come under scrutiny over a promise in its promotional material to put a percentage of ticket sales costs towards Strawberry Hill House.

The house’s director, Nick Dolan, said the registered charity has not received any money from the venture.

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A screenshot of some of the original promotional material for Richmond Rink

Mr Dolan said: “I think the bottom line is for the two years that Twickenham Alive were the event organisers for the ice rink at Strawberry Hill House, we received no income whatsoever from that activity.”

Mr Driscoll, of Twickenham Alive, said the group had hoped to donate 50p to the house per ticket sold but this could not be achieved.

He said: “We donated a specific income of £2,000 plus to the House’s Peacock Fund, which would have received match funding, giving the House £4,000 plus.”

The finance department at Strawberry Hill House has said this was not the case.

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Berkley Driscoll and Teresa Read of Twickenham Alive

Mr Driscoll said: “We started the rink relationship with Strawberry Hill House as a community partnership and not as a commercial deal. The primary goal was to promote Strawberry Hill House and introduce it to people who would otherwise never know of the house, particularly young people.

“It was also a way to bring visitors to the house during the winter period.”

SSS submitted a planning application in June this year to open the temporary ice rink again, but this time without the partnership with Twickenham Alive.

The Twickenham Alive team, which intends to hold Richmond Rink again this winter in a different location, claims SSS has used the same design, which it says constitutes an infringement of copyright and has launched an online petition calling to stop copyright infringement in planning applications.

Mr Driscoll said: “We believe that this is an issue with planning in general and therefore we have started a petition to seek a way to prevent this copyright abuse. In the meantime we reserve the right to seek legal redress against SSS if we choose.”