News / No more SIC councillors on charitable trust
SHETLAND Islands Council members have unanimously decided that in future no councillors will be put forward to serve as trustees of Shetland Charitable Trust (SCT).
The decision, taken at a Full Council meeting in Lerwick Town Hall on Wednesday, came after the SIC was asked for its views on the trust’s latest governance reform proposal.
It would have seen the number of councillor-trustees on the 15-strong board reduced from seven to four.
But the motion from councillor Vaila Wishart to cease putting members forward, backed by all 12 councillors who took part, means the trust will have to reconsider its future governance arrangements.
It has faced considerable criticism for plans to increase to 11 the number of appointed trustees – with its own vice chairman Jonathan Wills leading calls for several directly elected trustees.
Alluding to that, Vaila Wishart’s motion also asks the trust to “consider how it engages with its beneficiaries, the residents of Shetland, and should not discount the suggestion of holding democratic election for trustees”.
SCT, previously controlled by the SIC, was set up in the 1970s and spends around £9 million a year on funding organisations and services including the amenity, arts and recreational trusts and Shetland’s rural care home model.
Wills, who abstained from the vote but did take part in Wednesday’s debate, said he had been asked to resign by trust chairman Bobby Hunter and fellow councillor-trustee Drew Ratter in recent days.
“The reason I’ve refused to resign… is that the trust has not debated and voted on the alternative proposal for a reorganisation that I have put up,” he said
He accepted there was an “inescapable conflict of interest” inherent in the appointment of any councillor-trustees.
But Dr Wills, who is retiring from both the trust and council next year, warned: “The democratic deficit will become absolutely critical if you decide to go for no councillors, because you’ll have a trust that has been de facto privatised. This is a unique trust with an inherently public character.”
He hopes the council decision, a “material change of circumstances” to borrow Nicola Sturgeon’s phrase, will force the trust to reconsider and have a “public, open, honest discussion about the alternative proposals”.
SIC chief executive Mark Boden’s report left it up to councillors to decide how many, if any, members they wished to put forward.
He did advise that the grouping of accounts and the perception of bodies such as Audit Scotland and charities regulator OSCR about the SIC’s control over the trust would be a “significant issue if you go for more than two” councillor-trustees.
Vaila Wishart said she saw no benefits from having councillors on the trust, and a number of disadvantages.
“I think there should be clear blue water between the council and the charitable trust,” she said.
“We have ways of working together through the Shetland Partnership… and I think that is adequate, because the conflicts of interest which have been raised during the past few years haven’t been resolved.”
Several councillors said they were keen to ensure a “close rapport” between officials within the two organisations.
Allan Wishart was the only councillor to voice mild dissent, though he also backed his namesake’s motion.
“If there was some guarantee that will continue into the future that’d be great,” he said, “but people fall out, and that link with the trust can completely be lost.”
Council leader Gary Robinson said there was a mistaken belief that trustees could “somehow act as a conduit between the two organisations”, when they were duty-bound by OSCR to act in the trust’s best interest.
He said there was a “real issue for the trust” in communicating better with the public, and called on the organisation to “up their game and really engage with the community”.
SCT audit and governance committee chairman Keith Massey responded by saying: “We had obviously hoped that Shetland Islands Council would be keen to continue to appoint councillors, albeit a reduced number, to the trust.
“We will now take stock of their decision and discuss its implications for the trust’s governance reform.”
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