News / Robinson rails at SCT’s ‘failure to engage’
A LACK of engagement from Shetland Charitable Trust is “making life incredibly difficult” for providers of vital public services in the islands, according to SIC leader Gary Robinson.
He was speaking after the local authority agreed on Tuesday to step in and spend £12,000 on a peer education project run by Voluntary Action Shetland, which had previously been bankrolled by the trust.
Robinson said there was mounting concern about the way the charitable trust – which recently confirmed plans to shed over £1.5 million a year in spending by 2020 – was choosing to operate.
“The real problem we have is the lack of communication and engagement that we have with the charitable trust,” he said.
“They are one of the major funding bodies for a lot of the things that happens in our community, and yet we’ve seen across the board 17.5 per cent cuts made to some of the major trusts that deliver in Shetland without any consultation with the council, or for that matter Shetland Partnership Board.”
Robinson highlighted social care, an area where the SIC, NHS and SCT all play a significant role, where the charitable trust plans to cut its contribution to the rural care home model by around £500,000 in the next five years.
“It is making life incredibly difficult for a lot of people, but the council and other community planning partners are finding it difficult too. For example, social care crosses the council, the NHS and the charitable trust, and not to be able to have the kind of engagement that we need to make the sort of long term decisions on those services is proving to be a headache.”
The council leader said he understood the need for the reformed charitable trust to demonstrate clear blue water between it and the local authority, which used to provide 22 out of its 24 trustees.
“I can understand wanting to have clear delineation between the trust and the council,” Robinson continued, “but there’s a clear delineation with the health board and we can still get them around the table to discuss things like joint commissioning of services, but we’re having real difficulty with the charitable trust.”
He met with trust chairman Bobby Hunter and general manager Ann Black to air his concerns and “we appeared to reach agreement, but sadly it doesn’t appear to have turned into the actions we hoped for”.
“It’s difficult to see how this can be resolved,” Robinson said, adding he felt the trust needed to be more accountable to the public.
Eight of SCT’s 15 trustees are now appointed through a selection process, while the other seven are SIC councillors. Robinson favours removing all councillors and having direct elections, an option rejected when the trust was reformed.
Regarding its decision to pull out of funding the peer education project, Robinson said he felt a statement from the trust saying it was closed to new bids was “fairly unhelpful”.
Those involved in the peer education project work with the council’s schools and youth services to raise awareness among young people about issues such as drugs and sexual health.
Robinson referred back to the trust’s decision to stop funding the Shetland Youth Information Service (SYIS) two years ago, something the peer education project sat within.
“While they were stopping funding SYIS, they said it wasn’t a cost-saving measure, it was simply the concerns they had with the governance of the organisation,” he said.
“That being the case, I don’t think it was unreasonable to think that, if the governance could have been sorted out for this part of it, which it is, that they would fund it.”
SIC children’s services director Helen Budge said the council would only consider continuing to fund the peer education project beyond this year if it was part of joint funding with others.
Budge said it was possible the NHS may be able to support the project in future too.
The charitable trust said it had made clear that it was unable to continue funding for the project due to its financial position.
Its statement said Voluntary Action Shetland was advised that “given the Shetland Charitable Trust’s current financial position, they are unable to commit to any further expenditure beyond that approved by trustees at their meeting on 19 February 2015 for the year to 31 March 2016.”
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