Yahoo News Plymouth dance company goes bust with massive debts
An award-winning Plymouth dance company has gone bust with huge debts and thousands of pounds owed to its workers just a year after being awarded £200,000 from the National Lottery. Exim Dance Company CIC has appointed liquidators and documents filed at Companies House reveal debts of almost £180,000, nearly all of which is unlikely to get paid.
Exim was one of the most successful and well-known dance organisations in Plymouth, as famous for its community work as for its dance classes. But it stopped operating in February this year with staff made redundant and freelancers affected too.
Now it has appointed liquidators at Castle Hill Insolvency, in Newton Abbot, and its statement of affairs shows cash is owed to the tax authorities, workers and grant-making bodies such as the Arts Council and Sport England. Overall, it is expected that creditors will be short of £167,152.
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The document, signed by director Esther Archer, shows Exim left £11,117 in cash, with no other assets expected to be realised. This will be eaten up by preferential creditors, which are claiming £18,958, including £4,801 to seven employees for holiday pay and wages under a statutory limit.
Six employees are also seeking £42,861 as unsecured creditors, and may not receive this, seeing as assets are so meagre. When Exim hit the rocks, dance professionals who worked for the community interest company said they were “devastated.”
Overall, unsecured creditors are claiming £158,477, including £45,126 owed to HM Revenue and Customs. The statement of affairs said £29,000 is owed in grant monies too, and a list of creditors includes the Arts Council, which is owed £15,410, the National Grid Community Fund, which wants £10,000, and Sport England, which is claiming £10,000.
Among Plymouth businesses owed cash are the Barbican Theatre, arts collective the Conscious Sisters, Dragonfly Wellbeing Centre, Fotonow SW, Horizon Counselling Services, Keyham Green Spaces, Livewell SW, Plymouth Community Homes, Plymouth City Council and South West Water.
Exim operated at Stonehouse ’s Oxford House Creative Hub, but the building remains open and run by its other lessee, Rhythm City Dance Studio, which is a completely separate company and totally unaffected by Exim’s closure. Exim had moved into the Manor Street building in October 2020.
It has been renovated to contain two dance studios, meeting rooms and other facilities. The building was co-managed with Rhythm City Dance Studio in a joint venture with the lease enabling one of the companies to continue if the other left.
Exim Dance Company CIC was incorporated in November 2011 and provided dance programmes and wellbeing services throughout the city. It worked with young people and adults, including in deprived areas of Plymouth, and provided free weekly dance sessions in community centres.
It also worked in schools and provided free health and wellbeing dance programmes for women. In March 2023, Exim was awarded £203,755 through a Reaching Communities National Lottery bid.
Exim Dance Company CIC’s most recent accounts, for the year to the end of November 2022, showed it made a profit for the year of £91,293, which was up from the £69,762 profit it made in 2021. It also had net assets of £173,806, up from £82,513 a year earlier.
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