Ex-tour firm boss made bankrupt

About 45,000 holidays were affected when the firm went bust

The founder of the collapsed Gloucester holiday company Travelscope has now been declared bankrupt.

About 45,000 holidays were affected and 270 jobs were lost when the firm went bust before Christmas last year.

Richard Ford said he had had his home near Painswick repossessed and now faced an uncertain future.

The county court has made a bankruptcy order against him in respect of nearly £1m in personal guarantees he had made against his former company.

Travelscope blamed litigation over a cancelled cruise as the reason for going into administration.

The firm was bought by its managers and re-launched as Phoenix Holidays.

The new company was able to honour many of the holidays, but 12,000 still had to be cancelled.

Mr Ford believes that what happened to him was the early stages of the current economic downturn.

"The banks were definitely tightening up last year," he said.

"The irony is that we had the equity, we had £5m of equity in our building alone.

"It's been very, very hard to focus all year, you have the demise of the business, then bankruptcy proceedings which drags on all year.

"It's been 10 months since its happened, since then I've been trying to keep my head above water."