Malvern Hills Trust: Latest letters on private bill debate

Sarah Rouse made a qualified apology to escape initiation of legal proceedings arising from the libellous and defamatory assertions made in her letter published on August 2.

However, the inclusion of “if this is indeed untrue” indicates that she still believes that a rebuff to an early approach to Malvern Hills Conservators (MHC) about my driveway has caused me to pursue a vendetta against the organisation.

The truth is I have never approached MHC about our driveway which leads directly onto West Malvern Road.

I did approach them about their responsibility for a track that ends at a second entrance to our property and also provides the only access route for several of my neighbours to their properties.

Our house deeds indicate this track existed and was presumably being used for more than a decade when MHC was established in 1884.

Also clause five of the second Malvern Hills Act of 1909 states that MHC should maintain and repair the hill paths crossing their land and pay all expenses incurred out of their (precept) funds.

Despite this, as the major users of the track, when I told MHC’s former CEO we were prepared to cover the cost of any repairs undertaken he still insisted that MHC had no responsibility for this track but that I need to get an easement from MHC to use it.

Furthermore, he made the untrue assertion that all my neighbours already had such easements in place. I decided to pursue a different approach.

I have tried to determine to whom MHC is accountable for the mandatory taxation-based public funds that it receives to fulfil its statutory responsibilities as a public body.

To date, this has proved impossible. However, what has become clear is the organisation has not set up or maintained a system of independent accountability covering the spending of the taxation-based public funds it receives which account for more than 99 per cent of its income.

Turning to the letter from MHC’s former chair (Mick Davies) he makes the interesting assertion that the trustees are the ultimate decision-makers and are accountable collectively to the public.

This would make the trustees the only public servants that I am aware of who are not accountable to an independent body that their spending of public funds is solely to fulfil the statutory purposes for which they were collected.

Prof Malcolm McCrae

Malvern

MALVERN Hills Trust seems hell-bent on rushing through a new Act of Parliament without consideration of public concerns.

Previous acts from 1884 were purposefully specific and did not leave much leeway for deviation from their principles.

Amalgamating previous acts into a true Consolidation Act is not in itself a malign idea.

What is frankly unacceptable is the excuse of updating the acts to introduce new contentious powers by the back door, giving the trust more unelected freedom than ever before.

Secondly, using the pretext of ‘efficiency’ to reduce the number of elected trustees to a pathetically small and unrepresentative number that can easily be outnumbered, controlled by salaried managers and overpowering future personnel, who may not even be local people but parachuted in with no real understanding of the locality, is also unacceptable.

The reason, it seems, for reducing Conservators to a ridiculously low number is to exercise absolute, uninhibited control without the ‘inconvenience’ of interference by local peoples’ representatives on the trust.

My father was a Conservator for 25 years from the 1960s to 1980s alongside Mr Ballard, a descendant of Stephen Ballard of Colwall who was a founding member of the Malvern Hills Conservators.

They would be shocked by what is now taking place.

Any misunderstanding of what the trust is up to could be allayed by honesty and transparency on their part and disclosure of the full draft bill as part of a true consultation.

That has now become essential. If MHT has nothing to hide, we will see the whole proposed act, not sanitised elements of it.

After 50 years in business, if I was ever asked to agree to or sign up to anything, I would expect to see all documents before proceeding — anything complex would go to our lawyers or accountants for clarification.

This also needs the same treatment as there seem to be too many mirrors and much smoke at present.

We need to protect not just the common land but also that hard-fought instrument our predecessors created — an Act of Parliament that would stand the passage of time.

This can only happen while it is democratically run.

Once you have lost that, you have lost what we were entrusted with in Malvern by those far-sighted, public-spirited, generous and selfless local people working for us ever since.

Humphrey Bartleet

Upton

COULD the CEO of Malvern Hills Trust, or rather Malvern Hills Conservators (if we use the correct legal title), explain why there is so much public argument and comment in respect of ‘are the Conservators a public body’ or ‘are they a charity’ or neither?

The public it seems disagreeing with the Conservators on this point currently.

I understand they are principally funded by a compulsory levy on some 25,000 households in Malvern (about £600,000) followed by funds raised from car parking (about £400,000) with an immaterial amount arising from ‘charity giving’ or ‘fundraising’.

They perform a function as prescribed by public statutes and the same statutes detail how the ‘Conservators’ are elected as well as their function and purpose, called I believe ‘objects’.

Therefore if their funding is via taxation and they perform public duties, such as look after public land to allow the public access to the land as I believe the Acts of Parliament decree, why have they so recently changed the terminology from public body to charity without changing their funding stream or indeed their function/purpose?

What is all the fuss about? Why do they only now consider themselves a charity?

If the CEO can’t answer the question, can a local legal brain?

I did quiz a couple of Conservators on this point at a ‘drop-in’ session and it was clear they had been told ‘we are a charity’ by the staff but had no understanding of how to evidence this.

John Andrews

Malvern

AT the Malvern Hills Trust special board meeting on August 8, the vice-chair, whilst trying to defend a view, suggested ‘throwing rocks from afar’ was not helpful.

I suspect the many people in the room felt his comments rather antagonistic.

My interpretation of his statement was he was suggesting those critical of MHT’s plans engage with the trust.

How ironic he and the new chair conspired, contrary to their own standing orders (they cited 12.5), to not allow the public to comment at the meeting.

Had they reached standing order 13, in particular 13.6, they would have learnt the public has the right to comment ‘at all meetings’ subject to earlier notification as has been the case for the last several special board meetings, hence a precedent.

The meeting lasted less than an hour so the ‘time is tight excuse’ fails to hold water.

It is also self-evident there is a problem with the governance of the trust because there is very little debate or discussion at board meetings.

Most trustees remain silent and wave a hand obligingly when asked to do so to ratify a motion.

Selective use of a rule set fails to breed confidence which last time I looked is a statutory duty of every charity.

Further, it seems most odd that trustees, upon the direction of the ‘governance change officer’, decided they could not even allow themselves sufficient time, as requested by several trustees, to review all the feedback for the recent consultation before further instructing their lawyers drafting the bill yet claims were made ‘we are not rushing this’.

I beg to differ.

Fred Tollday

Malvern Link