AS one of the speakers at the Malvern Hills District Council meeting named by Councillor (Sarah) Rouse in her letter last week, I was shocked to be targeted purely for standing up as a member of Friends of the Commons of Malvern to ask councillors to remember the words of Cynthia Palmer when she resigned as chair of the Malvern Hills Trust.

The purpose of the meeting was to formulate the council’s response to specific items in the trust consultation.

I contacted the council to ask them where I could find the public record of what I had said and was told that it did not form part of their minutes for the meeting because it was not part of the councillors’ deliberations.

So apparently there is not even any point in registering to speak at a council meeting.

I had naively thought that councillors would listen to me and give my suggestion some consideration.

Residents with genuine concerns have the right to expect elected councillors to listen to our views in a fair-minded way (councillors were reminded of that by the chairman before the meeting started).

Like the former chair of the Malvern Hills Trust, I am walking away from this.

Anne Dicks

Malvern

THE issues with the Malvern Hills Trust private bill impacts the whole of Malvern.

The trust is asking for carte blanche to become entirely finance-driven.

Several issues to which I object: 1 Preserve the hills and commons. No need for any additional powers.

2 As a precept payer (who has to give directly for the upkeep of the hills and commons) we should have adequate representation on the trust committee, not rely on unelected trustees with no connection to the area.

3 The trust has declared proposals which are unclear and in many cases totally ambiguous.

Ms (Sarah) Rouse is discrediting the Guarlford campaign, saying it is inaccurate and ill-founded when there are legitimate concerns over poorly-conceived proposals by the trust.

As a MHDC councillor and previously vice-chair of the trust, are not her inaccurate accusations at odds with the code of conduct for a district councillor?

Penny Witcomb

Malvern

THE letter from Wendy Jensen in last week’s Malvern Gazette is correct.

The Malvern Hills Trust did say that the current tax base for raising the precept was ‘out of date, illogical and unfair’ and it did say it was the DCMS in the 2019 failed consultation document and the Charity Commission in the current document that stopped this urgent modernisation from being part of the modernisation proposals.

Solid evidence shows without question that both statements were untrue and that facts had been deliberately hidden from trustees by one or more employees.

Regrettably, within the three minutes maximum allowed to speak at board meetings, other equally-serious failings could not be addressed.

A request by me to the trust to provide all trustees with that further evidence was rejected by an employee, stating instead it would be using the trust’s procedure for dealing with complaints. I rejected that approach.

These are just two examples of the trust being run by the employees rather than the trustees.

In November 2023 employees, including three ‘senior managers’, were telling trustees to ban some trustees from a committee because (for good ethical reasons) the trustees had been unable to sign the code of conduct.

Employees also demanded that those trustees be banned from receiving confidential information, including documents that are not stated to be confidential.

A fourth example was when I was a trustee myself.

For over five months, senior managers refused to provide me with information to which I was entitled.

Only following an intervention by the Charity Commission was I provided with the information.

That disclosed the real reason for the failed 2019 proposals was not the one trustees and the public had been told but something more embarrassing and so £150,000 of precept payers’ money was wasted.

My attempt to draw their attention to these other extremely serious failings at the board meeting held on July 30 was overruled by the acting chair.

Rather than address their own failings, the trustees spend their time passing a motion without a shred of evidence when the July 11 meeting continued on July 23, claiming there was a ‘recent campaign of disinformation against the trust in which unfounded, inflammatory and grossly misleading statements have been made’.

For the record, every single false statement, deception and statistical failure in the consultation document disclosed by the Malvern Hills Action Group’s fact-checking service is backed up with solid and complete evidence, not smears and innuendo.

I would invite the trust to provide evidence showing that anything in this letter or any other publication by the action group is untrue.

John Watts

Malvern Hills Action Group

THERE is a pattern appearing in the letters column of the Gazette when addressing the goings-on at Malvern Hills Trust.

Those who have concerns with the trust’s consultation proposals identify examples of those concerns and provide evidence.

A response from current or some former trustees deny those concerns not with evidence but assertions, platitudes and smears. Last week’s letters was a case in point.

Wendy Jensen reported serious untrue statements being made and provided a link to the trust’s minutes where solid evidence supporting her claims could be found. We then have the letter from Sarah Rouse.

At best, her letter was a stream of consciousness, albeit a venomous one.

First she failed to disclose that she is not an independent voice in this matter. She failed to disclose she had been a trustee for six years and a vice-chair for four years up to her resignation on November 2, 2021.

As such she played an active role in the failed Charity Commission scheme that cost the precept payers £150,000.

Secondly, as both a former trustee and a current district councillor she is obliged to abide by government’s Nolan Principles of Public Life. This she fails to do.

Principle 1.3 (Objectivity) states “holders of public office must act and take decisions impartially, fairly and on merit, using the best evidence and without discrimination or bias’.

This she manifestly failed to do with her vitriolic attack on six individuals, all without a shred of evidence but with plenty of bias from her former position as vice-chair.

Another concern is the ethical, if not legal, question of using information she has obtained either as a councillor or trustee.

From the ancient Greeks onwards, it has been known that the ad hominem fallacy of attacking the person rather than the statement is the lowest form of debate.

James Alexander

Malvern