Assetless company given millions of govt money...

[yorkie]

- The website looks like it was made for a school project.

A decent school website project would be able to make a working login box.

Their site has a JPGE image of a login box. But if they are going to make an image of a fake login box, they could at least have made it a PNG image (even Year 10s ICT students are taught that a small image of this nature containing text should be a PNG rather than a JPEG) so it makes you wonder just how incompetent they can get.

None of their images have 'alt' tags, making the site totally inaccessible for blind people. As anyone involved with creating a website should know, not everyone can see images. So any images that contain text should have a text alternative, and any image that doesn't contain text should have a summary/description; even if it's just something simple like "Seaborne logo". But they have nothing! This is really basic stuff, which I knew when I learnt HTML basics at the age of 15.

If it is a school project website, it would get a low grade at GCSE level.

And their job application form is too basic. It asks for name, address, email address, phone number, education and training and qualifications. And that's it! But presumably all their jobs go to friends and family anyway, so need to ask for more

 

[EM2]

If you're a company with no assets, no staff, a copy & pasted website, that's never traded, how do you find out about Government contracts worth millions of pounds?

 

[sprunt]

I wonder if they are anything to do with these guys:

http://www.seains.com/Seascope-Insurance-Services.htm

Based just 2 doors down from where the address for seaborne freight is listed.

The Seaborne address (59 Mansell Street) has two occupants as far as I can tell from a quick google - the Royal Society for Public Health and a law firm that seems to specialise in maritime law to some degree, if the list of services is anything to go by. Presumably they're also taking post for Seaborne.

 

[alex17595]

I was bored so I did some armchair investigation.

Brian Raincock and Peter Hampton and linked through a couple of law firms. This doesn't show up as there is multiple profiles for both in the companies house system. These are Lawsure direct limited and Litigation Management ltd.

Interestingly Glenn Dudley also has the alternate spelling - Dydley (confirmed to be dudley from the documents) He shows up as having been a director for a company registered in the British Virgin Islands in 1996. This is registered as a Transport/Haulage company.
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/FC018567

 

[edwin_m]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46748193

A firm awarded a government contract to provide extra ferry services has used website terms and conditions apparently intended for a takeaway food firm.

Seaborne Freight was given the £13.8m contract to run a freight service between Ramsgate and Ostend in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

Its original terms and conditions advised customers to check goods before "agreeing to pay for any meal/order".

Perhaps they were hired because they were cheap as chips?

 

[alex397]

Or cheap as takeaway pizza?

This whole situation kind of sums up Brexit really. An absolute calamity.

 

[edwin_m]

I hear there are some Iranian people in the Calais area who have lots of boats small enough to fit into Ramsgate. Perhaps DfT should commission them instead?