Pace hotting up as Saturday’s National Trust for Scotland AGM approaches

(Updated 25th September) Not a natural hotbed for revolution, the National Trust for Scotland (NTS) has been propelled into a state of prolonged agitation by the controversial management style of its Chair, Shonaig MacPherson, who is standing down at some point before the end of her term in September 2010.

This situation has been aggravated by equally controversial decisions announced by the NTS’s new CEO, Kate Mavor, within a week of her arrival in the Spring of this year. This was the sudden announcement on March 6th of the imminent closure of 11 NTS properties and gardens and the loss of 91 jobs. This was a self destruct button for the NTS’s public relations, leaving it with profound damage. The backtracking was swift, with only 4 properties now to close, although around 60 staff, 40 full time, will still lose their jobs.

There is a damage limitation strategy under way at the moment to try to save Ms Mavor, who is centrally associated with Shonaig MacPherson’s management style. Mavor is now being said to have been left to take the flak by MacPherson, calling in the sympathy vote. This is revisionist.

In announcing and defending the proposed property closures, Ms Mavor was as hard-faced an apparatchik as one could imagine. She has also had the role model of MacPherson before her.

While the Trust may be exhausted after the scale of the upheavals it is living through, it might be advised to clear out the entire management stable and start afresh.

Since the row over the proposed property closures, there has been a further row over the proposed sale of Wemys House, the Trust’s imposing HQ at Edinburgh’s Charlotte Square. This may involve loss of status but does not involve loss of a traditional location. The Trust’s presence in this building is less than a decade old.

The NTS AGM takes place on Saturday 26th, facing a vote on a Confidence Motion in the Trust’s management – whcih may well be watered down in pre-AGM negotiations.

The charities regulator, OSCR, is known to be concerned and the respected former Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament, George Reid, is a welcome new appointment as an independent voice. He will now Chair the Strategic Review of NTS Governance from the position of having no association with the operations of the current management.

He is already discussing the terms of the Review and is to attend the next meeting of the NTS Council in late October.

The Lobby Group, In Trust for Scotland, formed to resist what it sees as the damaging actions of the Chair, Shonaig MacPherson and the current management team, is asking that, following Ms MacPherson’s announcement that she is standing down, she should take no part in the forthcoming Governance Review.

Saturday’s AGM will be a lively affair. Since the damaging events of the Spring, NTS membership has grown strongly. It is likely that this has been fuelled by supporters both of the current management and of those pressing for change, each wishing to declare its fealty.

There is little doubt that the NTS has long been in need of profound revision. However, the current management team’s attempts to railroad changes – some ill-considered – in an authoritarian manner and with weaknesses in their own professional quiver, has been cack-handed and may actually lead to halting progress.