Private Eye reports on the National Trust’s finances in 2020/1:

‘The 2020/21 financial year wasn’t great for the National Trust’s staff, 1,767 of whom were made redundant, less than half of those (845) voluntarily. But every cloud, as they say.

Last year did prove a nice earner for the charity’s investment fund advisers. Twelve institutions including Rothschild & Co, BlackRock and JP Morgan shared a grand total of £13m, a £2.1m increase on the previous year and getting pretty close to the £17m of investment income that the funds generated. It doesn’t seem to have been money particularly well spent, either, as the performance on the £1bn of funds managed through the year underperformed the “benchmark” indices against which they are judged (returning 5 percent versus 7 percent).’

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