The announcement that the national Trust for Scotland (NTS) was to make 90 employees redundant and seemingly all but abandon 11 of its properties was met by many of its members with a mixture of horror and disbelief. While some have since accepted the bad news as another symptom of the current economic nosedive – a view very much expounded by the Trust’s top brass – others feel the changes are the product of an inept organisation and that, given the right direction, it might still be possible to save those places earmarked for change.

The case for

While it’s no surprise the Trust has come under fire for its hardline stance, the reality of their £3m annual economic deficit is grim Chief Executive Kate Mavor is candid enough to admit that ‘it is no secret that the Trust has suffered from poor past management and has been living beyond its means for some time.’ When coupled with ‘an unprecedented economic downturn – one that has affected all organisations – we need to react swiftly’, she points out. And, after ‘wide consultation, in which everything has been considered,’ selecting 11 of the organisation’s least profitable sites for potentially drastic changes, perhaps even total closure, will, she hopes, be a start on the road to financial recovery.

After all, she reflects, ‘it is clear the current business model just doesn’t work’. However, she also feels that the organisation has over the years made a decent fist of a task of Herculean proportions. After all, she points out, ‘many of the properties have been donated to the Trust precisely because no one else can afford to look after them’ and only nine of the NTS’s 130 properties have endowments to pay for their upkeep. As a result, she is determined that neither members nor the general public should turn their back on the NTS in its hour of need.

‘Please support us in these changing times’, she urges. ‘We need membership, we need enthusiasm. Please visit our properties, please volunteer. ‘Our current course of action is the only responsible thing we can do,’ she continues. ‘It would be irresponsible to our members to fail to adapt to a world in financial turmoil. Although we might have to change our methods, our ultimate goal – protecting Scotland’s heritage – is not up for grabs’.

The case against

One of Mavor’s exhortations – ‘to be active members’ – has required little encouragement, although in general those who have sprung into action have been motivated more by the desire to banish the bogey of closures than to leap up to support the Trust. The only changes they want are in the structure of the organisation itself. This increasingly vocal and organised resistance is characterised by In Trust for Scotland (ITFS) – a body established by Bill Fraser and Mary E Mackenzie, which hopes to hold the leaders of the NTS to account.

Fraser is determined ‘to give voice to those members who are not happy with the governance of the Trust, view the board as undemocratic and the council as supine, and feel disgruntled by an extremely patrician attitude of an organisation that is guilty of taking decisions in a bubble’. ITFS’s ‘ultimate objective’, Fraser explains, ‘is to force an Extraordinary General Meeting of the Trust, by gathering the support and signatures of at least 2000 members, in a bid to delay the board’s decision on the properties. And he ‘has been rewarded by a flood of supportive phone calls, letters and emails’, as well as the backing of numerous MSPs. People have also been rallying around the individual properties, and this local support is characterised by the Arduaine Garden Action Group – a body established to find a future for the fantastic Argyllshire gardens, with or without Trust support.

Their goal, as Rick Potter, Treasurer of the Scottish Rhododendron Society, outlines, is twofold: in the short term to ensure the gardens are not closed before a contingency plan can be made; and in the longer term to try to find the £40,000-60,000 per year required to keep the gardens running. Co-founder Calum Ross points out that the situation is not as dire as has been often reported. ‘The Trust are not proposing to lock the door of the gardens and throw away the key’, he observes, and the Group’s tactics of ‘reasoned arguments as opposed to angry protest’ have also yielded constructive meetings with the NTS. But, ‘while we are pleased by the Trust’s response’, he concludes, ‘and are hopeful of keeping the gardens open, we’ve still not been offered any concrete assurance that this will be done’.

Conclusions

It is clear that the Trust’s current turmoil, while exacerbated by global financial meltdown, has its roots in longer term mismanagement and in a corporate structure urgently in need of change. On this point both members – as is demonstrated by the mass mobilisation of ITFS – and the Chief Executive seem to be in agreement. However, the potential closure of properties ‘left in trust to the nation’, is more contentious and, despite some grounds for optimism, as shown by the discussions between the Trust and Arduaine, it seems that financial reality is likely to take its toll on several magnificent sites. Nevertheless the prospect of people leaving the Trust in droves would be counterproductive and can hopefully be averted by a dialogue between the board and its members – one that can unite the organisation, preserve Scotland’s heritage and restore the nation’s faith in the Trust.

field facts

The National Trust for Scotland Wemyss House, 28 Charlotte Square, Edinburgh EH2 4ET www.nts.org.uk