Argyll interest in AGM confidence vote in NTS Chair Shonaig MacPherson and Board

September 26th sees the AGM of the National Trust for Scotland (NTS) vote on a confidence motion in, first, the Chair, Shonaig MacPherson and then the Board, high on the agenda.

The result will be of purely academic interest to Ms MacPherson who is becoming an experienced passenger in the ejector seat. She has, as we reported, just recently announced that she is to stand down as Chair of NTS  sometime between now and this time next year. In January this year she departed as Chair of the Intermediary Technology Institute.

A divisive figure from the start of her position with the Trust, an article in today’s Sunday Herald, A Crisis of Trust,  quotes Rob Gibson MSP, deputy Convenor of the Holyrood Economy, Energy amd Tourism Committee describing MacPherson as ‘totally inappropriate’ for the requirements of her post.

Kate Mavor, the current CEO of the Trust, contributed to Macpherson’s ills with her own performance in fronting the closures, mothballings and changes of use proposed in the Spring this year for no fewer than 11 Trust properties. Mavor’s proposal was defended by Macpherson and the Board. It is not known how far she was solely responsible for the plan. It is fair to say that MacPherson’s leadership of the Trust has not been collegiate.

With no evident awareness of inherent contradiction, a defence of Mavor and MacPherson ic currently being offered – that it was the Trust’s skillful management that was responsible for the success of closing only four properties rather than the planned eleven.

The reality is that it was the firestorm of public anger and critisim, allied with disturbance within the Trust’s staff and the formation of energetic lobby group, In Trust for Scotland, that pulled back the closures to four. There has been no public statement on the specific financial position resulting from the retention in active service of seven of the proposed eleven properties slated for the cryogenic programme. (One of the reprieved properties is Argyll’s Arduaine Garden which has just over six months left of a year to secure its independent financial future.)

If the Trust’s finances are indeed sound after this change of mind, it begs two questions at megaphone level:

• Why did the Trust plan to close eleven properties when four was financially feasible?
• Why, if public donations made in response to the obvious crisis facing the Trust’s finances have saved 7 of the 11 proposed closures, could a less disastrous way not have been found to raise such donations?

There is no doubt that this episode, led publicly anyway by Mavor, has damaged public and private confidence in the Trust.

The propulsion for this suddenly announced and, on evidence, imperfectly prepared plan, was profound concern about the state of the finances of the NTS.

While it may well be that the Trust’s underlying situation may be sound enough, no secure organisation makes a precipitate announcement of the closure of eleven established properties, the loss of 90 staff (only 25 posts have been saved with the reduction of property closures to 4) and follows that with a decision to sell the Trust’s HQ in Edinburgh’s central and historic Charlotte Square.

Mavor has returned the compliment this week, defending her Chair from ‘deeply unpleasant  and unjustified’ personal vilification. This may be loyal but it defies the fact that the Chair has chosen to lead in a way that leaves more general criticism of the Trust’s management unfocused.

Charles Barrington, the Trust member who has put down the Motion of Confidence, has contributed a striking simile of MacPherson’s controversial leaderships style in Edd McCracken’s peice in the Sunday Herald. ‘Everyone feels that the Chair has been running away with decisions, like a rugby player on the way to the try line, palming people off”.

Of course there is another side to the picture. As Mavor has rightly said, there is a resistance to change and an organisation with the ingrained aristocratic habits of the National Trust is quite likely to be a repository of such resistance.

However, this does not defend the Chair from allegations of inapproprate management. If the Trust is like a massive oil tanker at sea, slow to stop and slow to turn, any attempt to turn it at speed is doomed to fail and to cause damage.

At this level, Rob Gibson’s charge that MacPherson ‘doesn’t have the skills to deal with this estate would seem to be justified’.

Allegations of a bullying culture are supported in small measure by our own experience. Our criticisms were enough to attract a suggestion that the Trust’s lawyers might have something to say to us. A misjudgment. We don’t frighten easily, unlike BBC Scotland. In the morning of 2nd September – the day of the threat received by us – there was a hot rumour circulating in media circles that Shonaig MacPherson had complained to the BBC about its previous coverage of her resignation from the Trust.

The BBC’s lunchtime coverage was disorganised to say the least – showing evidence of hasty and imperfect editing; and successive coverage was notably muted.

The Trust’s AGM on 26th September is going to be a much livelier affair than usual and with much more media interest. Both camps are entrenched and prepared. Both are claiming the probability of victory. Watch this space – and every other space in town.