Councillors unhappy with Zetland trust’s paltry payout

COUNCILLORS have voiced their frustration after hearing that Zetland Educational Trust (ZET), a charity with £665,000 in the bank, paid out just £2,000 in the form of 10 bursaries to students last year.

Shetland Islands Council is the sole trustee of ZET and elected members are still awaiting a report from finance chief Jonathan Belford on how to get away from the fixed term investments that are stifling its ability to help more islanders with their education.

Last year the trust earned £5,193 from bank investments and dished out 10 £200 bursaries to university students.

The overall £2,000 sum paid out is a slight drop on the previous year and barely a tenth of the £17,842 paid out two years ago.

That annoyed SIC member Theo Smith, who pointed out councillors had complained about the situation last year and “it would appear absolutely nothing has happened in the interim”.

He was frustrated the ZET fund had earned “even less than we did the year before” when members agreed to look at the trust’s constitution in an effort to find ways of increasing its earnings.

Councillor Jonathan Wills wondered whether rolling the money up into the council’s overall funds and creating a new bursary scheme might be the best way forward.

Belford said the trust had been locked into a fixed deposit account until the final quarter of 2015/16, but acknowledged he still needs to look at finding an alternative investment strategy.

Bursaries are distributed by the trust, formed in the 1960s, under the names of original donors E. & M. Gair and Arthur Anderson.

The trust can also provide grants for projects of a “general educational nature” – though no such projects were funded in the past 12 months.