National Trust’s efforts to save cash must take on board local views

THE plight of the hospitality and holiday industry could not be spelled out more starkly than by the latest difficulties for the National Trust, which, as the WMN reveals, is being forced to make changes to the way it runs four popular Devon properties.

Overbecks, A La Ronde, Shute Barton and Loughmoor Meeting House are all facing significant change, with restrictions on opening times and accessibility almost certain to be introduced, even when lockdown ends.

The Trust has had to make difficult decisions after recording a £200 million loss during the pandemic so far.

It needs to cut its running costs by £100m a year – a tall order for any organisation, but one that will be familiar, if not in size then in scale, for hundreds if not thousands of hospitality and holiday businesses all across the Westcountry.

The Trust is, however, a special case, not least because it relies on its members for financial and moral support. As a charity that owns huge tracts of land and some of the most important historic buildings in Britain, it has a very different profile to the private businesses that are revaluating the way they run their operations. As a result, the decisions it takes are subject to scrutiny and – in some cases, criticism – that would not be levelled at operators in the private sector.

It is fair to say that the National Trust is not held in the same high esteem across the country as was perhaps once the case. Its efforts to modernise, the manner in which it seeks to bring in a more diverse range of visitors and its concern to reflect modern sensibilities about some issues around Britain’s past have sometimes jarred with a proportion of the population.

Of more concern locally, however, is the way that much-loved properties and areas of the landscape are managed when, from time to time, that seems to be out of kilter with the views of the people who love and cherish them.

We understand why the National Trust has had to make difficult decisions about the future of several of its properties in Devon. But we understood too why people in the village of Shute, in East Devon, are so upset by the decision to close, to all but holiday accommodation renters, the magnificent and ancient Shute Barton.

One sentence from a letter sent to the Trust by the acting chair of Shute Parochial Church Council sums up their disappointment. Dr Bijan Omrani writes: “The loss of opportunities for the local community and general public to access it is extremely retrograde, and it is the last thing we would have expected of the National Trust, whom we would have expected to ensure public access whilst balancing this with the long-term preservation and financial viability of the building.”

There may be no alternative for the Trust in this, or many other cases, other than the course they have chosen. But senior figures within the charity need to be aware that decisions like this have a significant impact locally and that bridges, once broken, in communities like Shute can be difficult to mend.

WE keep hearing of more and more planned wind turbine farms in the sea. So there will be ‘forests’ of metal masts to hold the turbine blades. Well, would it not be sensible to utilise these masts also for the production of tidal hydro power? Surely it’s not beyond our engineering skill to attach a tidal turbine to each mast? The wiring is already there for the wind turbine, so this would greatly increase the output from these ‘farms’.

After all, in windy conditions such as we have recently had, the wind turbines get switched off but the hydro turbines would continue to produce electricity every day of the year. Two sources of power for the price of one mast.

Also, if each ‘farm’ was made a marine conservation area, there would be places of safety among the masts for young fish and other sea creatures to grow and mature, which would also help our fishermen.

Just a thought!

Kate Templeton Newton Abbot, Devon