Reflections on the National Trust AGM

Dear Zewditu,

I have been a member of the Trust for sixty years and a volunteer for fifty. I now volunteer at Brockhampton. For the first time I attended an AGM – this year in Bath.

My overall impression is that it was well organised and rehearsed and generally a very professional event.

However as a window on the Trust over the past year and a glimpse into the future, it was disappointing. It was rather self congratulatory and there was not a single indication of future policy.

The Trust is a great organisation but it has lost its mojo gradually over the years. When I joined the Trust, it was run by a small number of people at Queen Anne’s Gate with all the day to day management done at a property level.

It will be said, quite correctly, that you could not run the Trust in that way now but there must be a middle course compared with today’s bureaucratic carapace at Heelis. One direct result of the stifling bureaucracy is that, as a generalisation, property staff are now line managers at the beck and call of Heelis and not curators of their properties. The Trust has lost direction in a number of ways:

1. A centralised bureaucracy – the central control of retail and catering from Melksham has always been a problem and resulted in a bland and generally uninteresting product; the current situation is appalling with many shops closed whereas if the control was delegated to the properties, many would find a way round the current lack of staff – using volunteers?

2. Pride, colonisation, slavery and BLM – I am surprised that the Charity Commission has not taken a tougher line as all these issues are overtly political and, like all politics, divide the membership unnecessarily.

3. AGM voting – patently unsatisfactory and unfortunately enables many of the problems and issues in the organisation to be papered over.

4. Following on from point 1, decision making at a local level appears to be very difficult – always limited by plans and budgets – and a need to refer a decision to Heelis. There is much lip service paid to local delegation of responsibility but the reality is different.

5. Volunteers are tolerated provided that they keep to their remit. Many are retired professional people and their expertise could be used by the Trust. In my experience, there is deep reluctance to work with volunteers at a policy level.

6. I wonder if the trustees are given a rounded view of the organisation by the Officers? From conversations at the AGM, they seem to have [a] a very rose tinted view of the general situation and [b] apprehension about the aims of Restore Trust.

To complain is easy – to rectify problems is more difficult. However there are many case studies of companies that have become top heavy and bureaucratic.

The basic remedy is to do away with the Head Office except for corporate functions such as finance and marketing.

All the other functions would then be delegated to the properties who could either call upon them but
would also be able to use outside contractors.

Yours sincerely,

RW Sutton
NT volunteer, Brockhampton