£100m boost for National Trust sites

The National Trust will use a £100million loan to improve its cafés, car parks, shops and toilets after a fall in customer satisfaction.

About £20million will be spent each year over the next five years to expand, improve and upgrade facilities, as well as tackle a backlog of repairs to farm buildings and homes and modernise holiday cottages. The improvements will be done without cutting spending on conservation work, the charity has said. Among those to benefit will be Dyrham Park, near Bath, with better facilities for the growing visitor numbers at the Grade I listed country house and gardens. The current facilities were built for around 100,000 visitors a year, but 244,809 passed through the gates in 2016/17 and 400,000 are expected by 2021. It comes as the trust announces alltime high numbers of visits to its properties and record membership – but a fall in visitor satisfaction levels. Visitor numbers have soared from 270,000 in the 1970s to 26.6 million last year, while membership has reached 5.2 million people, a rise of more than a million in just five years, the charity’s annual report said. But the trust admitted the surge in trips to the places it cares for has seen some smaller cafés, car parks and shops, often built decades ago, struggle with visitor queues and frustration at peak times. And many places have only basic facilities, while some outdoor sites have no catering on offer at all. The National Trust has seen visitor satisfaction slide in the past year, with the proportion of people rating their visit as excellent down to 61 per cent in 2017/18 from 67 per cent the previous year. The trust said it had decided to fund upgrades to facilities to improve the experience for visitors using a low interest, unsecured loan, which has been approved by the Charities Commission. As a result, no income from membership fees or donations will be diverted from its conservation work. Sharon Pickford, director of member services, said: “We are delighted that more people than ever before are enjoying spending time at our properties. Our challenge is to make sure that our visitor facilities can adequately cope with demand while maintaining levels of investment in conservation. “We know the facilities at many of our places have failed to keep pace with this growth.” Properties will “bid” for the money with a business plan setting out how a minimum 10 per cent return on the money borrowed will be delivered, so they can pay off the loan and generate additional income for their conservation work.