THERE were two articles in last week’s Gazette and a long letter from Mr McCrae about Malvern Hills Trust.

Having been at the council meeting the six trustees’ plan was not “blasted”.

One councillor got confused about what was being proposed and others wanted to make the trust a subsidiary of the council and run its finances.

Which would have seen it completely controlled by Malvern Hills District Council.

Out of nine public speakers three spoke for the plan, one seemed obsessed with the hills being fenced off and no one being able to walk on them (not possible as they have to remain public open space) and the others all lived in Guarlford.

Katherine Harris, Graham Crisp, Richard Fowler and Anne Dicks have all been heavily involved in stopping a development behind their houses.

This has been going on since 2019.

The two opposition groups to the trust are run by people living around this field.

The only way to build on the field is for the trust to grant access via an easement.

Anyone seeing a lack of transparency in their behaviours?

We then have Mr McCrae who wanted the trust to pay for his easement to his house to be repaired. I seem to remember the trust said no.

So we have an active group from Guarlford and another annoyed he had to pay for his own driveway.

Add in Mr Parsons who I once had to force to apologise in a trust meeting for his comments then I am afraid I am not bought that these are people who have no axe to grind and are against reform simply because they believe it to be the best for everyone and not just themselves.

On top of that you have the chair who resigned when she did not like being one of only four who voted against going to consultation on the bill.

In democracy when a vote is carried by such a huge majority you then move to deliver that.

The trust is not a political organisation.

You cannot then keep complaining that everyone else voted a different way and you lost.

I am really tired now of one side of this argument saying everyone who does not agree with them is corrupt and not transparent, especially given their motivations.

Sarah Rouse

Leigh Sinton

LIKE many others in Malvern, I am becoming increasingly concerned with the Malvern Hills Trust and its proposals listed in its private bill consultation document.

Missing from most of its proposals was any explanation or evidence for why it wanted so many powers.

I have recently read the minutes of the MHT board meeting held on July 11 2024, the one where one of our most respected local councillors resigned as chair of MHT.

If reading her reasons for resigning was a shock, I was even more shocked when I read a statement made to the board by John Watts.

He had identified that the MHT had stated in its 2019 consultation that the current tax base from which the precept is raised was “out-of-date, illogical and unfair”.

He then explained the reason why the trust could not address this matter in 2019 was because it had been prevented from doing so by the DCMS (Department for Culture, Media and Sport).

Mr Watts then states that something similar happened in the latest private bill consultation but this time it was the Charity Commission preventing the “out-of-date, illogical and unfair” tax base being changed.

My shock arose because Mr Watts then provided evidence to show both the 2019 and 2024 statements by the MHT were untrue.

In the case of the 2019 statement he explained that two whole years earlier the trustees of the MHT had voted unanimously against “incorporating any changes into the levy-paying area”.

It was therefore the trustees themselves and not the DCMS that stopped the out-of-date and unfair way of the precept issue from being raised.

In the case of the 2024 private bill consultation, Mr Watts quoted from a Charity Commission letter to the MHT that states that it was not the commission stopping this issue being modernised but the MHT.

He then states he got confirmation from the commission that stated “it was a decision of the Malvern Hills Conservators not to seek to include substantive amendments to the levy in the proposed private bill”.

Telling such lies is totally unacceptable behaviour and the whole board ought to resign en masse now that the truth is out.

Mr Watts claims that the whole consultation document is “riddled with errors and false claims”.

If that is correct then the trust must abandon the whole consultation exercise before it wastes even more of the precept payers’ money on what appears to be little more than a vanity project.

Wendy Jensen

Malvern