Trust to be wound up

SHETLAND Development Trust is to be wound up and its assets transferred to Shetland Islands Council.

Development committee chairman Alastair Cooper said that due to changes to the tax regime the council had to move to protect “Shetland’s funds”.

Up until now, SDT avoided paying any tax on its profits by donating its surpluses to charities such as the NAFC Marine Centre and COPE, in turn enabling both those organisations to recover the tax that had been paid by the trust.

“The development trust was a creature of its time, but we are now in a situation where the local authority has far more economic powers,” Cooper said.

“We also have a new tax regime which means that the development trust had a very significant tax liability next year would we continue without change. So, we had to do something.”

The trust was established in 1996 to support economic development in Shetland by providing financial support to local businesses and industries which found it difficult to obtain bank loans due to limited security.

SDT has assets of over £20 million held in European fish quota (around £17 million) and in loans to local businesses (just over £3 million).

Cooper added that the local authority was acutely aware of potential implications for the value and security of its quota investments should Scotland find itself outside the European Union after the September referendum.

“The perceived wisdom is that the fisheries quota will exist in some form or another going forward,” he said, adding that there wasn’t a “clinical answer” to the question as yet.