Paddy Davitt King's Lynn chairman Ken Bobbins last night insisted the club is not facing administration over an outstanding tax bill.Bobbins confirmed the club had agreed an acceptable payment plan with the Inland Revenue after being issued with a compulsory winding up petition.

Paddy Davitt

King's Lynn chairman Ken Bobbins last night insisted the club is not facing administration over an outstanding tax bill.

Bobbins confirmed the club had agreed an acceptable payment plan with the Inland Revenue after being issued with a compulsory winding-up petition.

“The notice is there but we have a letter from the Revenue that it is cancelled,” said Bobbins. “We wanted to get this news out to our supporters because naturally it might cause a degree of alarm but let me reiterate - we are not talking about administration or anything like that.

“We don't want people making assumptions. The crux of the matter is that within the next three months any outstanding and long standing revenue debts will be cleared leaving the club in a stable financial position.

“That will more than satisfy the payment plan they have set us. The money paid to the Revenue will be cleared so that going forward our club will be financially extremely sound.

“We have a fans' forum scheduled next week and the board are more than happy to explain the issue in further detail to allay any fears.”

Bobbins revealed the club's board members had personally paid off 50pc of the outstanding tax bill in the last few days. Lynn fell behind with their contributions following the fall-out from major shareholder Michael Chinn's exit towards the end of last season.

“We've never, ever ducked our responsibility but they said to us recently they wanted the whole lot in six weeks. We've been negotiating since that demand and on Tuesday of this week we came to agreement to pay half - not Michael Chinn - but the directors all put the money in on agreement we pay the rest in a short period of time.

“Unfortunately notification of the winding-up order then appeared in the London Press because confirmation of one of the payments was not made. We made individual payments and faxed confirmation to the Revenue but there was some problem and that then triggered a breach of the agreement we had in place but it has now been sorted.”

Bobbins admitted Lynn's current board inherited an outstanding tax debt.

“It's quite a long-standing bizarre situation that dates back to about 1997,” he said. “We paid quite regularly until about six months ago when the local tax office contacted us after we did, in fairness, fall behind following the well-documented financial problems we had at that time.

“They told us there was a problem with that so we talked and worked out a procedure that would clear the whole debt in 18 months. We made a couple of payments but then another part of the Revenue service said that was unacceptable and we had to clear the whole outstanding amount about six weeks ago. That came totally out of the blue.”