Siblyback Lake Unofficial Guide

Siblyback Lake is owned by South West Water, the company created in 1989 with the privatisation of the water industry. South West Water lease the lake on a five year rolling lease to South West Lakes Trust which is a company limited by guarantee (registered in England number 3946529) and also a Registered Charity No. 1079966. The trust oversees Roadford Lake, Siblyback, Stithians, Tamar Lakes and Wimbleball from their Head Office at Roadford Lake. They in turn use a subsidiary trading company called South West Lakes Limited (company number 03955075) to run the Outdoor and Active Centres and Camping at their various lakes. Any excess funds in this trading company are then Gift Aided back to the South West Lakes Trust in a curious tax efficient money-go-round. For the year ended 31st January 2018 South West Lakes Limited made a trading profit of £99,282.

Searching today on Google for "Siblyback Lake" and one of the prominent pages that appeared in the results was on the visitcornwall.com website. Strangely a month after the watersports centre was closed, they continued to advertise it on their site. This is likely to lead to confusion and possible disappointment among visitors to Cornwall, the very people their organisation is supposed to help! What is particularly interesting about this is that the Chairman and non-Executive Director of South West Lakes Limited Malcolm Bell is also Chief Executive of Visit Cornwall. South West Lakes Limited is the subsidiary trading company that previously ran the Siblyback watersports business at the lake on behalf of South West Lakes Trust. So VisitCornwall can't really argue that they didn't know about the closure! Malcolm Bell is also a Trustee of the Wheal Martyn Trust Limited which runs the china clay museum just outside St Austell. Following an email to Mr Be...

Today an email was sent by Andy Parsons to attendees of the 13th March meeting. The South West Lakes Trust has now partially reversed its decision to completely close the lake to watersports users in 2019. Annual Members will be permitted to continue launching and using the lake under the Buddy System. Additionally, users of the boat park will be able to continue storing their boats at the lake. What isn't clear is what constitutes a "regular launch participant". If someone comes to the lake once a year that is a "regular launch". We will be seeking clarification on that point. Details of costs and rules are yet to be worked out but at least this looks like a step in the right direction. However, there remains the issue that a lot of people who don't know about the closure of the watersports and camping are going to be disappointed. Around 5000 people used the watersports facility last year. That gives the potential for a lot of disappointed cust...

A petition set up to protest against the decision by the South West Lakes Trust to close watersports and camping at Siblyback Lake has now reached nearly 1000 signatures. This number shows the strength of feeling among users of the lake against this decision. The petition is just part of the on-going pressure being put on South West Lakes Trust to reconsider their decision. You can sign the Petition by following this link: Save Siblyback Lake Watersports

Following the well-attended public meeting held at Commonmoor on Saturday 9th March 2019, seven representatives of the watersports users met with Andy Parsons Chief Executive of South West Lakes Trust at Siblyback Lake on Wednesday 13th March. Mr Parsons made it clear early on that he will not reverse the decision to close the Outdoor and Active centre or Campsite for the 2019 season. Representations were made by the users to continue allowing members to use the lake under the "Buddy System". This is a safety based system where as long as two separate water craft are on the water at one time, members could sail or windsurf when the centre is closed. Mr Parsons agreed to consider this idea and to respond with an answer by 22/03/19. Other interesting points from the meeting: The closure is intended to be temporary. Watersports may be offered again but in a different form which the SWLT needs time to consider It seemed SWLT had underestimated the strength of feeling of...