The subject of trustees has cropped up a number of times over recent years and continues to be a matter of concern.
Yesterday a report into the problems at the major charity Kids Company highlighted the failure of trustees to hold the Chief Executive to account. It seems there's no shortage of senior staff in public and charitable institutions prepared to do all they can to evade robust scrutiny of what's going on. At times it seems the public should trust them no more than they would profit making private businesses. Now there are questions about Age UK. Have their trustees been vigilant?
Blacka has two sets of trustees with responsibility for what goes on here. Sheffield City Council holds the position of charitable trustees for this land gifted to the public by Alderman Graves in 1933. Having leased the land to SWT another set of trustees became involved, those of the wildlife trust. But that did not mean that SCC could walk away from responsibility. It has a legal and moral duty to see that the terms of the governing document are respected in all that happens, obligations that are by no means simple therefore in need of careful consideration. All efforts on my part to determine that due consideration is given have met with a response best described as a fobbing off. It's left to someone else to do, therefore it doesn't get done. At one time the trustee duties with respect to charitable land and assets were delegated to a council committee or a scrutiny board; there would be an annual agenda item on the committee's programme, giving the duty a public face. One feature of that was the opportunity it gave to members of the public to be present and possibly raise points to be considered. In recent years something odd happened to this practice. While being on a scrutiny committee's programme it stopped appearing on any agenda. Somebody unknown had made a decision that the council's duty would not be observed. Later, when this anomoly was raised it came to light that the duties of charitable trustee had been taken 'upstairs' and the Cabinet more specifically the appropriate Cabinet Member had now taken over the role. But there was no evidence provided that she/he had at any time sat down and considered the details of the charitable documents in relation to what was happening on the ground. My money is on nothing being done at all. That is the present situation: effectively nothing happening, so duty not being performed.
The other trustees are, of course, those of the wildlife trust. We know their names but they operate in secret so we can't know if they do their job properly. Apart from what's on their website we have to rely on hearsay, intuition and what we can pick up from other sources. I've posted about them here and here. The new Chair of SRWT's trustees has recently moved into the role having been only on the board for a short time; that seems unusual. It may, but how can we be sure, have some relationship with the greater ties between the National Trust and SRWT, who now share a reserve manager with the charity. NT is seen as a strong and impenetrable organisation; local people are likely to get nowhere with them unless extremely wealthy and already very influential with access to the media. It may be that the conservation industry's big project, the Sheffield Moors Partnership saw SWT as the weak link and needed some support. The new chair has held senior roles with NT locally. One can over-read things into this but what else can we do when nobody in these organisations is signed up to the principle of transparency. I've not yet met the new chair of trustees so will have to reach tentative conclusions based only on what I can read and what I've been told. His board-membership of organisations like the CPRE and PDNPA will have seen him sit alongside those within the conservation and landowning establishment in company with those having a certain quasi political purpose which may remain at a tactical distance from party allegiance.
The new chair of SRWT's trustees has now it seems gained a foothold not just into SRWT but also into Dore Village Society on whose behalf he's been manning the barricades to defend the rights of condemned street trees in and around the locality. That's very worthy I'm sure and the tying of ribbons around village trees must take up a deal of time. It would take a lot more time to tie ribbons around all the trees on Blacka Moor under threat from the SRWT chain-saw enthusiasts. Yet from my perspective the brutal killing of trees arising naturally from land totally suited to such native vegetation is an infinitely greater crime, especially on a nature reserve, than the planned replacement of street trees already in an artificial setting. Has this argument had anything like a hearing in the decision-making meetings of trustees of SRWT? Or do they pretend it's not an issue? Anyway these street trees are in the council ward of Dore and Totley. They constitute an avenue of sycamores planted along the roadside to adorn the approach to the city. Needless to say their future is in doubt as they await the chain saw treatment despite some protest from regular users. Now where's a trustee and some yellow ribbon when you need them?
Postscript, 10th February
See this article in The Guardian:
http://www.theguardian.com/voluntary-sector-network/2016/feb/10/charity-trustee-terrified-being-next-alan-yentob
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