Prospect tells Holyrood Committee that National Trust for Scotland has been seriously damaged

Prospect, the  trade union representing 80% of Trust employees has today, in a submission to Holyrood’s Economy, Energy & Tourism (EET) Committee, stated that the NTS’s recent closures and redundancies have left the Trust severely damaged. The Trust itself has attempted to present these as a positive action.

In a property-by-property analysis, Prospect has classified the current status of the Trust on a spectrum of Intolerable-Critical-Tolerable, suggesting that the Trust management should have taken a different course.

As a matter of interest to Argyll, Propsect’s analysis of the Arduaine Garden situation is:

‘The Trust is already paying the price for the reputational loss from the proposal to close this garden and walk away. This was a high-risk strategy, and came as a bolt from the blue for the staff at the garden and even for the Head of Gardens. The additional complication of Phytophthora, plus other moral commitments, mean that an alternative solution to closure must surely be found. The garden houses a plant collection of international renown, and is part of a string of attractions up the west coast’.

Prospect says of the Trust’s management of the situation: ‘The fact that the financial position for year ended February 2009 was very significantly better than budget, appears to have been clear well before the end of the consultation period for closures and staff cuts. But it was not acted upon to mitigate the risks’.

A spokesman for the energetic ginger group formed to fight these Trust property closures and staff redundancies, In Trust For Scotland (ITFS) says: ‘When we began our campaign we lamented the Trust’s secretive attitude and its failure to consult members or Staff before embarking on the closures and redundancies.

‘The union’s damning analysis of the results endorses our view that the Board failed to take into account the views of its best informed allies – its loyal staff and volunteers’.

The Trust’s own submission on the matter of the proposed property closures, is an exercise in spin which would deceive only the uninformed. The relevant paragraph reads:

‘The result of this decision in March 2009 was a redundancy programme  combined with proposals to close or limit access to 11 loss-making properties with low visitor numbers. A 2-month consultation process ensued which resulted in fewer redundancies and property closures than feared. 45 full-time and 43 seasonal posts were lost (of which 21 were voluntary) and only three properties were mothballed until their futures could be decided. These are Hill of Tarvit in Fife, Leith Hall in Aberdeenshire and Hutcheson’s Hall in Glasgow. In addition, it was decided to demolish the visitors’ centre on Ben Lawers’.

The fact is that this plan was announced with no consultancy period at all. What ‘consultation’ eventually took place resulted only from sustained and vigorous attacks on the plan by supporters of several of the properties concerned.

When the Trust now says that these process resulted in ‘fewer redundancies and property closures than feared’, it glosses over the fact that the reduction in redundancies was slight – as we have reported – and that 7 of the 11 properties actually could not be closed for weight of public opinion and damage to the standing of the Trust.

The now vaunted ’2 month consultation period’ hardly squares with the fate planned for Argyll’s renowned Arduaine Garden. This was to have little more than three weeks to close from the date of the announcement of the plan – despite the obvious  fact that it was about to enter the main tourist season and its best earning period of the year.

Few would dispute that the NTS is in serious need of reform – to its structure of Governance (in which a review is under way); to the universal professional, skilled and experienced competence of its management at national and property level; and including its informing social attitudes.

But it is hard objectively to mount an evidenced defence of the current management whose efforts have brought a bad situation to national attention. That, of course, may turn out to be their most enduring achievement.

The Trust’s AGM on 26th September will see put to the test a confidence motion in the current Chair, Shonaig MacPherson and in the NTS Board. Ms MacPherson has already announced that she will stand down before the end of her term in September next year.

Here are the Briefing Notes on today’s meeting of the Scottish Parliament’s Economy, Energy & Tourism (EET) Committee which was considering ‘Developments at the National Trust for Scotlnad’ and which reproduces both the NTS and Prospect submissions.