News / Charitable trust defends SRT funding after Scalloway criticisms
Scalloway Community Council calls for pool closure to be postponed one year
SHETLAND Charitable Trust has said its reserves are “not a rainy day fund” while defending its support for Shetland Recreational Trust (SRT).
The charitable trust’s statement comes in response to calls for more funding to be given to the SRT to ensure Scalloway Pool can remain open beyond next month.
And Scalloway Community Council (SCC) has also urged SRT to postpone the closure for at least one year, while formally requesting more money to keep the pool open.
SRT chairman David Thomson said last week that it received just eight per cent of an asked 14 per cent funding uplift from SCT in 2025.
Both the charitable trust and Shetland Islands Council (SIC) were told “the seriousness of receiving less than the absolute minimum necessary”, Thomson said.
In a statement today (Wednesday) however, Shetland Charitable Trust (SCT) said it was confident it had “acted responsibly” and provided ample financial support to SRT.
Chairman Robert Leask said it was “important to detail” the extra support that SRT had received, and will continue to receive in years to come.
“Our current five-year grant agreement with SRT represents a 22 per cent uplift and includes steady, year-on-year increases,” he said.
Leask added that SRT had received £16 million for 2021-2025, which had increased to £19.6 million for 2026-2030.
“To put that into perspective, SRT will be getting approximately 40 per cent of SCT’s entire grants budget,” he said.
In addition, the recreational trust was given £600,000 during 2021 and 2022 to help it through the Covid pandemic.
The trust said that in 2023 it spotted the “precarious state” of SRT’s finances during routine financial monitoring.
That prompted a further “bail-out” amounting to £512,000 during 2023 and 2024.
The trust said that SRT was also awarded £6.1 million in capital grant funding in April 2022 to repair and maintain its leisure centres and pools, which included £1.2 million for Scalloway.
The charitable trust said that the SRT then requested in November 2023 that this figure was “revised down” to just £2.5 million – which included the reduced sum of £600,000 for Scalloway Pool.
SCT’s vice chairman Ryan Stevenson emphasised that the reserves were “not a rainy day fund”, and that trustees had a legal duty to protect its own financial situation.
“If SCT was called upon to plug the growing gaps in the finances of public services it would erode the reserves and reduce what we currently spend in the community,” Stevenson said.
He added their £10 million a year grant pot for the five years to 2030 was the maximum sustainable spend, and said it was already “hugely over-subscribed”.
“We have to make choices between what we spend on sport and leisure, social care, the voluntary sector, arts and heritage. Most get less than what they asked for,” Stevenson said.
Meanwhile SCC chairman Lawson Bisset, in an open letter to SRT chairman David Thomson, has urged the recreational trust to push back the closure of Scalloway Pool by at least one year.
He said the purpose of the year period was to allow all relevant parties to “identify and develop solutions”, including potential funding streams.
Bisset said the SRT needed to make an urgent submission to SCT to stop the closure and allow Scalloway Pool to remain open while more discussions take place.
Shetland Charitable Trust will meet tomorrow for their regular meeting, with an update on the issues at SRT to be given to trustees behind closed doors.
Leask will accept a petition from the Save Scalloway Pool group, which has garnered thousands of signatures, in a handover ceremony before the meeting.
The SCT statement comes a day after Shetland Islands Council chief Maggie Sandison also responded strongly to claims that the SRT had made.
Council was not ‘repeatedly briefed’ about SRT finances, chief executive says
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