Dear Ripple Coop 4 Member,

Here is the 5th June update for Ripple Coop 4 Limited.

• Fundraising
• Additions to the Board of Directors
• A Coop 4 Baby!
• Response from Begbies to our questions regarding the Administrator’s Report
• Voting on the Administration Proposal and Creditors Committee
• Conduct of Ripple Energy and its former officers
• Chargebacks and Section 75 claims
• Change of Registered Address
• Access to Board Minutes

Fundraising

In the last email update, we mentioned that fundraising was on the horizon. It is now here. We appreciate the messages of thanks that we receive and that are posted on WhatsApp. We were also grateful to see the results of the poll at our General Meeting where many members indicated a willingness to donate some money to support legal action (and other critical expenses). We are now at the point that we need to raise some money to continue. A huge thank you to everyone that has already contributed!

There are two particular areas which need funding in the immediate term. The first is insurance for the directors of Coop 4. This insurance was previously provided by Ripple Energy. It protects the directors while acting for the Coop. Without that in place, none of the directors feel able to take the personal financial risk that comes as a result. We are awaiting a quote effective from 28th June when the current insurance expires.

The second is to pay for legal advice to the board. Once Begbies receive their legal advice and share it with the board, we may need to take advice and possibly challenge it. At that point we will need to pay a barrister and almost certainly solicitors as well. We will work to keep these costs to a minimum. Note that it should be understood that this would be legal advice for the board acting in the best interests of members and should not be expected to be available to members. This would be necessary to maintain any legal privilege and to not jeopardise the board’s efforts.

We think the best approach is to raise funds now to cover these potential costs through a crowdfunding platform. We are asking Members to donate via ​https://coop4.uk/fundraising​.

The money received will be held in a Coop 4 bank account and be controlled by the Coop 4 board. It will be used to pay for directors insurance, for legal advice and other essential running costs. We will consider reimbursement of some other minor expenses that the directors have already paid out of our own pockets. These are items such as the domain name, email services, and registered office/mail forwarding – some of these costs are ongoing.

We estimate that we need to raise a total of £35,000 for the directors’ insurance and for possible legal expenses. To put this in context, there are approximately 7000 members in Coop4. If every member donated £5, we would raise that sum. However, we appreciate some will not be able to spare this amount and others may be able to give a little more. We also need to factor in fees charged by GoFundMe and that some members may not contribute. Therefore, we are asking for a donation of £15 to support the board and its efforts to achieve the return of our money. Please only give what you can and understand that:

• If the board determines the money raised is not needed at all, all of the money can be refunded. However, this is unlikely as we need to pay for directors insurance at the end of June for the board to continue to work for the coop’s members.
• If some donated money remains after the payment for insurance and legal expenses, gofundme doesn’t allow us to easily refund part of each member’s donations. In that case, we would either hold that amount for continued activity of Coop 4 until it is no longer required, or donate it to an appropriate cause in line with members’ wishes.
• Any money donated is separate and unrelated to any other payments such as your wattage fees and Ripple arrangement fees. It is not an additional purchase of wattage amounts.
• The £35,000 target is based on initial estimates of our immediate costs. If our estimates are low or the legal process takes longer than we hope, we may need to raise additional money. We hope that won’t happen, but it is a possibility.
• The directors will continue NOT to be paid for their time, this is to cover essential expenses only.

Two of the other Ripple initiated coops, Graig Fatha and Kirk Hill have wind farms that are already operational and generate electricity which is sold and generate savings for their members. Both coops have temporarily suspended savings payments to members to build up funds for their Coops’ needs. Unfortunately, the Coop4 board does not have that option. At the moment, Coop4 has no funds under the control of the board. A fundraiser is our only option to pay for the directors insurance and anticipated legal costs.

Please click on ​https://coop4.uk/fundraising​ to make your donation.

Thank you.

Additions to the Board of Directors

In the last update, we announced the resignation of Ursula Stevenson and asked for volunteers with legal and accountancy experience to become board members. There was an excellent response from the members and we are pleased to announce the board has selected three people to co-opt onto the board:

• Sonya Leydecker – a retired partner and CEO of a major international law firm, chair of a homelessness charity and business coach
• Jetinder Shergill – a lawyer, member of the bar of England and Wales with experience in finance and accountancy areas
• David Roberts – a retired software engineer, senior international technology manager, management consultant and Friends of Whitelaw Brae founder

More details of their backgrounds and terms can be found on the Coop4 website – ​https://coop4.uk/board-of-directors/​

Note – We may still be in touch with others who have put their names forward to help and advise us in other ways, as we’re keen that we draw upon the wide range of skills and expertise our members have.

A Coop 4 baby!

Congratulations to our Coop secretary Klaus and his wife who welcomed a new baby boy recently!

Response from Begbies to our questions regarding the Administrator’s Report

In May, the board received a copy of the Administrator’s report (see ​https://coop4.uk/documents​) from Begbies Traynor LLP and reviewed it. It identified two sums of money that have now been ring fenced. We sent a number of questions asking for clarification regarding what the two sums consisted of. The response from Begbies indicated that until financial reconciliation had been completed, they were unable to respond to our questions.

In the report, Begbies also indicated that they were seeking legal advice and would wait for that until acting further. We asked when Begbies requested legal opinion and when they expected to receive it. The response indicated that legal advice was requested on April 30th 2025 and is expected in early June.

Voting on the Administration Proposal and Creditors Committee

The Administrator’s proposals provide routes allowing us to vote on certain aspects of the proposals. As a board, we voted against each of the proposed actions in the administrators proposal. We felt that it was premature for Begbies to proceed without receiving the legal advice. We want to have the opportunity to review that advice and if we feel it is incorrect, to challenge it.

We also voted to create a Creditors Committee. We believe, based upon the Administrators’ proposals, that we are the largest creditor and submitted three nominees for the committee who have legal and accountancy experience. If this is successful, we will announce the members.

Conduct of Ripple Energy and its former officers

The Administrator’s proposals provided a route for raising concerns about the conduct of Ripple’s business, and (former) officers. We have submitted a letter to Begbies with our observations about the conduct of the officers for their consideration.

Chargebacks and Section 75 claims

There is also a volunteer-run WhatsApp community: ​https://coop4.uk/whatsapp​ that was started by the Friends of Whitelaw Brae.

Please note that the WhatsApp group is not run by the Coop’s board of directors and any opinions given by directors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the board.

An increasing number of Coop 4 members are reporting success in using their bank or credit card companies’ chargeback or Section 75 claims process to get a return of their money. Status is being tracked in a spreadsheet and there are helpful tabs providing crowd-sourced guidance: ​https://coop4.uk/s75​. Thanks to Doris for setting this up!

There are now separate WhatsApp groups for each of the banks that issued credit and debit cards which members used to purchase their wattage amounts. Experiences with each bank are different and sometimes members have inconsistent experience with the same bank! See the group for your bank for details!

Change of Registered Address

The FCA portal now reflects that our registered address has changed so that it is not ℅ Ripple Energy in Ayr. (This was announced at the general meeting held earlier)

Please do not send any correspondence to this address as it is intended for statutory contact and the coop is charged for other letters received.

Fundraising Reminder

Please click on ​https://coop4.uk/fundraising​ to make your donation to support the Coop4 board.

Access to Board Minutes

The approved minutes for recent board meetings are now being published on the Coop 4 website – see ​https://coop4.uk/minutes​. We seek to publish the historic board minutes in due course.

FAQ

If you have any questions we have published some FAQs at ​coop4.uk/faq​, if you can’t find an answer, please fill in the form on our website. We’ll answer as many questions as possible by updating the FAQs.

Sam, Sonya, Tom, Klaus, Jetinder, and David

Board of Directors – Ripple Coop 4 Limited

Dear Ripple Coop 4 Member,

Here is the latest update for Ripple Coop 4 Limited.

Board of Directors

We are sorry to announce that Ursula Stevenson has resigned from the board on 7th May 2025 in order to prioritise her other commitments. We are very grateful for Ursula’s efforts in the past and her assistance this year in transitioning the board into a quorate and functional team; without her efforts we would not be in the position we are now.

The Board needs to have a minimum of three Directors in order to operate. In the interests of resiliency, more directors are needed. The board is now looking for more members to co-opt onto the board. This approach is being taken instead of holding elections due to the logistical challenges and potential costs of holding elections. Directors co-opted in this manner will serve only until the Co-op’s general meeting which is planned for later this year.

• The Directors of the Coop are volunteers and do not receive any payment for their services. The time commitment is approximately 4 to 6 hours per week. Board meetings usually take place on weekday evenings, starting at 8pm. If you are interested in serving as a board member, please complete our form here: ​https://coop4.uk/become-a-director​
• We would particularly welcome applications from members with legal (particularly relating to insolvency) and / or accountancy experience.

Receipt of Begbies Traynor’s Proposal

The board received a copy of the Administrator’s Proposal from Begbies Traynor (Central) LLP earlier this week and have reviewed it. A copy can be found on our website at: ​https://coop4.uk/documents​. It is 47 pages in length. The significant highlight is:

“As mentioned earlier, the Company acted as the managing person(s) on behalf of the Co-op’s. Funds totalling £6,882,050 has been transferred into a separate administration estate bank account pending specialist legal advice and a reconciliation exercise, if required.”

Comments:

1. The good news is that some money has been found and is currently being ring fenced. It is not known if the amount represents all of the Coop 4 funds received from members as some were paying incrementally, but it appears that there may be some shortfall compared with the total funds that members have invested.
2. The frustrating news is that Begbies is still obtaining specialist legal advice. Please note that Begbies is required by law to issue this report within eight weeks of the start of administration. However, they are waiting for legal advice before acting. We will be contacting them shortly to request again that they define a timeframe by which they will receive the advice.
3. The board met with an insolvency law firm (Leonard Curtis) free of charge in preparation for the administrator’s proposals. Now that we have received these proposals, they will be reviewing them and other documents such as the customer agreement for their insights as to if there are any legal avenues that we might consider. We particularly want to understand what legal questions Begbies might have about the ring-fenced money. These initial calls are being provided free of charge and we are grateful to Leonard Curtis for their advice and support. Ongoing support would need to be paid for.
4. The Administrator’s proposals provide routes for raising concerns about the conduct of Ripple’s business, and former officers, and also allow us to vote on certain aspects of the proposals. We are collating advice on the most effective way to make any representations.

Fundraising

We were incredibly grateful to see the results of the poll at our General Meeting that many members indicated a willingness to donate some money to support legal action (and other critical expenses) if needed. We are not quite at that point, but want to be open that fundraising is on the horizon should we come to the conclusion that this offers the best chance of a positive outcome for our members.

The outline of how it would work:

• Members donate via GoFundMe to support legal action and other minor expenses such as the domain name, email services, and registered office/mail forwarding already purchased.
• A small donation from even some of the Coop’s 7000 members could provide a significant fund.
• If the board determines the money is not needed at all, the money can be refunded via the same platform.
• Money would be held in a Coop 4 bank account and be controlled by the Coop 4 board.
• If excess money remains, it could not be returned to donors, but held by the Coop in case of future need for funds, or donated to an appropriate cause in line with members’ wishes.

Chargebacks and Section 75 claims

An increasing number of Coop 4 members are reporting success in using their bank or credit card companies’ chargeback or Section 75 claims process to get a return of their money. Status is being tracked in a spreadsheet and there are helpful tabs providing crowd-sourced guidance: ​https://coop4.uk/s75​.

There is also a volunteer-run WhatsApp community: ​https://coop4.uk/whatsapp​.

Please note that the WhatsApp group is not run by the Coop’s board of directors and any opinions given by directors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the board.

Board Minutes

The recently approved board meeting minutes have now been published on the Coop 4 website – see ​https://coop4.uk/minutes​.

We seek to publish the historic board minutes in due course.

Didn’t receive this update via email?

If you are a member of the Coop and reading this update on the Coop4 website or social media, but didn’t get a copy in email then:

1. The email has been blocked as Spam / Junk Mail. Make sure you are receiving emails from us – please check your spam folder – we also recommend you add [email protected] to your “safe senders” list
2. If your email address has changed since you registered with Ripple, update us – email ​[email protected]​.

FAQ

If you have any questions we have published some FAQs at ​https://coop4.uk/faq​, if you can’t find an answer, please fill in the form on our website. We’ll answer as many questions as possible by updating the FAQs.

With best wishes,

Tom, Klaus & Sam