News / Trust reform proposals ‘inadequate’
ANTI-VIKING Energy campaign group Sustainable Shetland has called on the Shetland Charitable Trust to have all its trustees “directly and democratically elected”.
The group, which has 800 members on its books responded on the last day of a two week consultation process into the charitable trust’s future set-up.
Under new charity law, SCT has to change the way it is run by removing the majority of council members from its board.
Proposals to reduce the number of trustees from 23 to 15, seven of who will be councillors plus eight selected members will be debated by trustees on Wednesday afternoon.
Shetland Charitable Trust is a 45 per cent shareholder in the £680 million Viking Energy wind farm project, which awaits a planning determination from Scottish ministers.
On Tuesday, Sustainable Shetland vice-chairman Kevin Learmonth said the group had submitted a detailed response to a previous consultation round on trust reform but had received no response from trust management.
In their latest submission they support the Association of Shetland Community Councils in its criticism of the “ridiculously short timescale” of the final consultation, and argue that selecting eight of the 15 trustees would not remove the SIC’s dominance over the trust.
Mr Learmonth said: “We find the proposed changes to the governance of Shetland Charitable Trust to be inadequate and unacceptable.
“Your proposals seek to continue the undue power and influence of councillors over the policy and governance of Shetland Charitable Trust.
“We object strongly to the extremely short timescale allowed for this consultation. The Charitable Trust’s own review group have taken two years to produce this proposal, the public of Shetland had just 16 days to respond.
“This does not meet good practice guidelines for community consultation and indicates the lack of weight given to genuinely reforming the trust, or consulting with the public.”
He added that Sustainable Shetland believed that all trustees should be “directly and democratically elected”.
Sustainable Shetland’s latest submission can be found here, while its previous response is at:
www.sustainableshetland.org/docs/sustainable-Shetland-SCT-consultation-response.pdf
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