National Trust

The National Trust has nearly 6,000,000 members - more members than there are people in, for example, Jamaica, Oman or Botswana - and a turnover getting on for £600m, so near the bottom of the statistical range for large businesses, of which there are of the order of 750 in the UK.

Towards the bottom of the second column from the right.

Given that both our main political parties have dug themselves into a hole by allowing members a direct say in the election of their leaders, rather than leaving it to their elected MPs, once thought to know best, I was interested to read over breakfast today about the forthcoming members' annual general meeting to be held in the Bath Assembly Rooms, hopefully rather larger than our Assembly Rooms here at Epsom, presently serving as a Wetherspoon's. To be fair, one can participate, to some extent at least, online.

The Trust is supervised by a dozen or so trustees, drawn from various backgrounds, from both public and private sectors. Trustees are assisted by a council of three dozen, half elected from the membership, half drawn from other interested organisations. The relevant arrangements are set out in the 150 pages of the Governance Handbook. All best practise, I dare say.

The Trust is actually run by an executive board, with one recent director general being a retired permanent secretary (from the Home Office), while the current director general started her working life as a graphic designer for the drinks industry. I think there is a regional tier but I have not come across that today.

So at this annual general meeting the members get to vote first in the elections for the replacements for the retiring third of the council and second on the six members' resolutions. Presumably there is another handbook explaining how a members' resolution makes it all the way from the grass roots of Steeple Bumstead (say) to Bath. I imagine the promoters of resolutions have to spend a prodigious amount of time at tedious meetings - not even in smoke filled rooms these days.

The six resolutions are: less participation in Pride, less rewilding of farmland (we need to grow more food, not more beavers), creating an ombudsman role, getting rid of Barclays as Trust banker (on climate/fossil fuel grounds), no tunnels anywhere near Stonehenge (not a National Trust site, although they have plenty of land nearby) and no chairman's discretionary votes at these meetings.

All stirring stuff, with the Board of Trustees opposing all six. Perhaps they regard it all as a way for members to feel that they are involved and to let off a bit of steam.

All in all, while I might be irritated by a lot of what the Trust get up to, I thought that they have got the governance about right.

PS 1: the first of the snaps above is drawn from the annual report for 2021-2022, easy enough to find but, in the first instance, made available in something called flipping book format, which I did not like at all. Download as pdf much better. The second was produced by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, also easy enough to find. I did not investigate whether the National Trust was included among the 750. Perhaps charities are excluded, even if a lot of them might just as well be regarded as businesses.

PS 2: governance dealt with, I turned to the discount code for Cotswolds that BH had found in the other NT magazine, the one with pictures. To find that Cotswold were offering a big discount on their regular prices anyway and were not going to add the NT 15% to it. Still a lot less than I paid last time. Long live the Moab Ventilator! This prompted by the events noticed at reference 2. While I continue to wonder what proportion of the purchasers of these fine shoes have a clue who or what Moab is.

PS 3: it seems that the grass roots of the ancient village of Steeple Bumstead of reference 3 may well include Lord & Lady Taylor of reference 4. Just the sort of people to be active in trusty matters.

Reference 1: https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/. They seem to have done a good job on making material about the trust easily available, as opposed to telling one about its many sites and attractions, even if some of the URLs are a bit odd.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/09/trolley-535.html.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steeple_Bumpstead.

Reference 4: https://www.lordtaylor.org/.