THE NATIONAL Trust has set up a group to review the organisation's governance arrangements, ensuring it meets current best practice now and for the future.
The review group will look at how the trust's council and its committees operate, issues relating to the AGM, including elections to the council, and also the ways in which the trust communicates with members and responds to their views.
The news comes in the wake of the Golden Cap affair, in which local members were highly critical of the regional management in the way in which it dealt with changes on the flagship estate.
West Dorset members took their concerns to the national AGM last autumn but the voting process meant that their well-supported motion calling for better communication and deploring the handling of the situation was not carried.
The trust announced this week that the review group will be chaired by Michael Blakenham, who has combined a distinguished career in industry and the city with involvement as a trustee at a number of charities, including the RSPB and Kew Gardens, where he is presently chairman of the trustees.
Other members of the review group will be Edward Walker-Arnott, who is a former senior partner of Herbet Smith solicitors, and is currently a governor of the Wellcome Trust, and three members of the trust's council, John Anfield, Ann Bartleet and Hugh Matheson.
The review group is expected to deliver its report to the National Trust's council towards the end of the year.
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