MacPherson out, Balharry in the hot seat at NTS

Quango Queen, Shonaig MacPherson, who proved a controversial and divisive Chair of National Trust Scotland, has today finally stepped down.

Dick Balharry, the current Deputy Chair is now acting as interim Chair.

In Trust for Scotland is a lobby group formed in opposition to the Shonaig MacPherson / Kate Mavor (CEO – still in post) regime, which shocked Scotland over a year ago with the sudden announcement that 11 NTS properties were to closed or to run in limited operation as  response to a serious financial situation.

In Trust for Scotland (INTS) and others blamed the financial crisis on MacPherson’s taking NTS into a commitment to build and run the new Robert Burns Centre in Alloway.

The Trust denied that this had impacted on its finances but Dick Balharry is stepping in to lead an organisation that has had to stabilise its finances by taking a massive £3 million financial hit on selling its headquarters in Edinburgh’s Charlotte Square and moving to the periphery of the city.

INTS has welcomed Balharry’s appointment at this extremely important time for the NTS.

A spokesman says: ‘The resignation of Shonaig Macpherson today breaks one link with the discredited management policies that contributed to the current crisis.

‘It is necessary to rebuild the Trust’s governance structure from the top down and we are hopeful that George Reid’s review will learn from past mistakes.

‘We wish Dick Balharry success in this very important role and look forward to an improvement in communication with NTS members’.

Dick Balharry is an east coast man, born and brought up in Muirhead, between Cupar and Dundee.

From childhood he was  curiosity about animals, accumulating a menagerie of around forty waifs and strays some of which he even bred in captivity.

Although he trained as an engineer he was first employed by the Red Deer Commission and later as warden of Beinn Eighe National Nature Reserve in Wester Ross. He is a self taught expert on Pine Martens.

A member of the Board of the NTS since October 2008, he is also involved with the John Muir Trust.

On agreeing today to act as interim Chair until a permanent Chair is appointed, he said, with wonderful ambiguity: ‘Following in the footsteps of our outgoing Chairman is not going to be an easy task’.

And so say all of us.