The members’ resolution on remuneration

We are asking for transparency on the pay of senior staff. The National Trust is as large an operation as a FTSE350 company, and we believe that it should adhere to the same standards in reporting. Full transparency means salaries are attached to names, as well as all associated benefits, including any severance pay or other personal benefits.

The members’ resolution on volunteers

The Trustees object to our resolution calling for the consultation of volunteers on matter which affect them that the National Trust ‘must not conduct any activities that could be interpreted as suggesting that we have an employment relationship with our volunteers’. In citing employment law issues over formal consultation, the Trust is disingenuous, as consultation with volunteers or employees does not establish an employment relationship. Real consultation means an actual dialogue with statements and plans challenged and tested and carried out before, not after, decisions are taken.

Before the pandemic, there were 65,000 volunteers performing tasks as diverse as joinery, maintaining a steam engine or conserving textiles. In total volunteers donated almost 5 million hours of their time to support the Trust’s work. Dedicated volunteers freely give up their spare time and it is important to them they feel supported, listened to, and treated with respect. Happy volunteers will make a positive impression on visitors and have good working relationships with staff. Today there are 50,000 volunteers, a reduction of 15,000 compared to before the pandemic. At National Trust properties we are often told that areas are not open due to volunteer shortages. Many volunteers have told us that they feel demoralized and have left or are considering leaving. They feel unhappy about a range of issues ranging from their working hours and breaks to the use of funds raised for specific projects by means of second hand bookshops. Volunteers of many years’ standing often know more about collections at properties a than the staff and have been there longer than most staff. They are a valuable resource, but they tend to be marginalized and ignored when they put forward ideas. At the heart of these problems is a lack of proper consultation.

 The members’ resolution on curators

The Trustees’ response to this resolution, set out in the AGM booklet, is evasive, specious and misleading, and it fails to address our two principal, closely connected, concerns: the grave undermining of curators, by downgrading their role and making significant cuts to their real numbers; and the over-arching use of a business model, operating as a commercial tourist organization rather than a charity. In combination, these two policies are having disastrous consequences for the conservation and presentation of its properties, violating its charitable purposes.

Curators, it is alleged, ‘are central to all decision-making about houses, collections, gardens and landscapes’. In fact, curators are now simply advisers, and they no longer have authority to make decisions that should be curatorial ones. Their advice is often ignored, or not even sought – and the results have been catastrophic. Ever-more intrusive car parks have have appeared to accommodate ever-larger numbers of visitors. Playgrounds proliferate in wholly unsuitable spaces, ice-cream vans stand in the middle of historic settings, and there is a profusion of incongruous advertising boards and banners. Clearly the curators have not been consulted about any of this.

Reflect on your first staff ID card at Stourhead

Presentation has also been trivialized, by nonsensical rearrangements of the collections or intrusive additions, such as the pretentious installations that ‘redefine’ Croome Court; or by gimmicky and patronizing signage, as in the wonderful gardens at Glendurgan and Biddulph Grange. At Stourhead a new ‘visitor experience’ has been imposed on the magnificent interiors created by the antiquary and aesthete Sir Richard Colt Hoare – ruining the experience for the visitor from the moment of entry: a huge white cube covered in apparently random objects dominates the Hall and pompously invites us to consider the significance of such objects as ‘your favourite coffee mug’ and ‘that pot plant’. The rooms beyond are peppered with white draped tables and further banal ‘interpretation’ (with no relevance to the house or its collections). At Attingham Park, the glorious dining room has now been despoiled by pizza boxes, fizzy drinks cans, sweet packets, a glitter ball … for the theme of party-time.

Party time in the eighteenth-century dining room at Attingham Park

In the Trustees’ response to this resolution, no mention is made of these desecrations. Instead they cite ‘recent exemplary work’ in restoring and re-presenting Knole Park, Mount Stewart, Dyrham Park and other properties. These restorations, which are indeed exemplary, were actually initiated several years ago and were completed before Covid. (The project at Dyrham, however, excludes the great bed, which shamefully has been shown stripped of its hangings for over twenty years, the Trust having reneged on its promise to conserve it in return for its long-term loan.)

The Trustees further state that there are now 106 ‘curatorial roles’ in the Trust, compared to 51 five years ago. Of those 106, 28 are ‘Experiences and Partnerships Curators’, the former Visitor Experience Consultants now with a grander, very misleading title. Another 27 are ‘Property Curators’, a new name for the former House Managers, only a few of whom have the qualifications or experience to take on curatorial work – but one who certainly did, the former House and Collections Manager at Petworth, has been made compulsorily redundant because his face did not fit the new regime.

A pair of marquetry commodes, designed to sit between three windows, placed back-to-back on a rotating pedestal.

The comparison with the numbers five years ago is equally spurious, for a substantial number of new curatorial posts were introduced four years ago. This much-increased cohort – introduced in recognition of a serious deficiency – is the relevant one to set against the current tally of true curators, and by which to measure the recent cuts. And the damage is not confined to cuts, for some of the surviving roles have been downgraded. Of the seven former senior national specialists, three have been made redundant, two have been demoted, and one now has to combine her specialism with being a ‘lead regional curator’ (though with no direct management of properties or other curators). The same confused and impractical doubling-up of roles has been imposed on a further six new part-time subject specialists.

An information sign at Hanbury Hall

In defence of the new approach to curatorship, the Trustees announce two new publications – 125 Treasures from the Collections of the National Trust and 100 Paintings from the National Trust. While these books no doubt serve a useful purpose, they are not works of cutting-edge scholarship and do not represent the painstaking work of curatorship. They are not a good use of funds set aside for scholarship and deeper understanding of the Trust’s collections.

In part, this deplorable maltreatment of its properties and collections arises from a misconceived desire to re-vamp the “mansion experience”, which is seen as outdated, together with a social campaigning agenda adopted at the most senior level of management, which has been the subject of much recent press coverage.

Almost more damaging, however, is the business model adopted for the management of the Trust’s properties. As stated in our resolution, property managers are required to ‘maximize profitability’ and ‘develop and grow a successful business’. The Trustees’ response to the resolution makes no attempt to answer this charge. Alongside the attempts to popularize the properties this policy has, unsurprisingly, led to massively increased visitor numbers, resulting in extreme and partly irreparable wear and tear – the subject of another resolution presented at this AGM, which we urge members to support as well as this one.