THE NATIONAL Trust is to begin campaigning more aggressively for action to combat the impact of climate change, which it says threatens the landscape and environment it was set up to protect.
The trust’s director general has told The Sunday Telegraph there is no contradiction between its status as a charity and its determination to speak out on controversial issues such as global warming and renewable energy.
Dame Helen Ghosh said: “Like any other charity we cannot be political with a capital ‘p’, but that doesn’t stop us from campaigning on issues that strike at the heart of what our charitable purpose asks us to do.
“All the practical evidence we have at the trust shows that the biggest challenge we are now facing concerns the threat to biodiversity and wildlife.”
The trust’s 10-year strategy, Playing Our Part, published at the end of last month, committed it to generating 50 per cent of the energy it uses from renewable sources by 2020.
Dame Helen said one of the big- gest side effects of climate change on the trust’s 775 miles of coastline — along with swathes of the British coast not under its ownership — was that of land erosion and soil being washed into the sea.
“We see parts of our coastline falling off into the sea. I like to show people a picture of a silverfish [a household pest]. They are insects that live under carpets and like damp and warmth, and we do have quite a lot of them in our properties. They used to get killed off in the winter because we had crisp, cold winters, but now they don’t,” said Dame Helen.
The trust’s renewables target could see more hydro-electric plants being built on the 635,000 acres of countryside it controls. But it also raises the prospect of it submitting fewer objections to wind farms. That would prove controversial among its supporters, many of whom object to what they regard as huge turbines ruining Britain’s rural landscape.
Dame Helen said: “We will be meeting our commitment predominately from hydro schemes, and with biomass boilers at a number of our big houses. And we do have the occasional turbine. We do not object in principle to wind turbines in the right place. In sensitive historic environments, wind turbines are not the thing to do, but I think we object to two per cent of all wind turbine applications.”
In recent years, the trust campaigned successfully to stop wind turbines being erected near two of its properties, Lyveden New Bield, in Northamptonshire, and Hardwick Hall, in Derbyshire. Last week, the wind industry announced plans to build a new generation of super-turbines up to 656ft (200m) tall, compared to the current average of 298ft (91m).
Dame Helen, a former career civil servant at the Home Office and Department of Environment, who has two children and enjoys tending her allotment in her spare time, also revealed that the trust’s emphasis is likely to move away from its traditional stewardship of large country houses to the care of smaller, but historically significant properties — such as the childhood homes of John Lennon and Sir Paul McCartney. “It’s things like the Beatles’ houses in Liverpool … Our visitors are absolutely loving them. Our latest opening is Stoneywell in Leicestershire, an arts and crafts house moulded into the landscape, which is cottagey rather than grand,” she said.
The trust is also lending its support to events being held this summer to mark the 800th anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta at Runnymede, near Windsor. It is inviting the public to visit its properties with specific links to Britain’s political history and take part in debates — over a National Trust cream tea — about the country’s rights and freedoms.
It is part of the plan to make the trust more relevant to the lives of people who have little, if any, contact with its work, said Dame Helen, who has been in charge of the organisation since 2012.
“People who don’t come to our houses say that they don’t believe they will be relevant to their life. That concerns me,” she said.