I wrote last week on the disastrous approach by Bournemouth Borough Council in trying to operate some of their museums and open spaces through three charitable structures. As a result of this decision and the lack of experience by the Borough Council in running charities, they had got themselves onto a list of the 12 worst run charities in the UK. One of the problems in these cases is that the Council had set the charities up with themselves as sole Trustee. In other words they wanted to separate these assets off from the Council balance sheet, the opportunity for fund raising that a charity could provide and perhaps the chance to avoid any blame in the eyes of their electors if things went wrong with any of these. However they were not willing to take the risk of handing these assets to people outside the Council to make decisions that the Council might in time regret. They wanted their cake and to eat it! There may also have been a lack of willing volunteers to act as Trustees. However that seems hard to believe bearing in mind the demography of Bournemouth and my perception of the importance of these particular community resources.

I have no personal knowledge of the history behind the Bournemouth story or indeed of Hampshire and Winchester whose story is told in this linked article. In the case of these two Councils, the plan appears to be to set up new charity(ies) to hold some of their historic assets. Let us hope they learn from their near neighbour and take advice from people who know how to run charities in an effective manner. One of the ways in which many of these assets arrive on Council balance sheets was through donation by residents through legacies on their death. The view was that Councils would be there for evermore and could sustain these assets in perpetuity. We have clearly reached the point where Councils are no longer able to do this. One wonders how many Wills lie in Solicitors offices, waiting to be enacted which will simply add to this ‘problem’.

The question is can our local authorities break up their estates in a piecemeal manner without creating additional problems. These properties were probably gifted to Councils at a time when charities were primarily used to help people in need. We have a thriving Arts and Culture sector that includes many charities. Would these donors have made a different decision had they known that our Councils are now obliged to restrict most of their time and energy to ‘statutory responsibilities’? If we assume that this direction of travel is broadly speaking the right one, we need to understand the potential risks. The story from Bournemouth tells us that the Council set up three charities when possibly one larger charity would have been more sensible. Finding one set of Trustees might be a challenge, to try to find three sets of Trustees is a much bigger task. Whatever the case using a public corporate body such as a Council to run a Charity is bound to create numerous questions and conflicts of interest, let alone the subsequent failure of a public body to send in the accounts on time.

Let us hope that the two Councils in this later story are undertaking an appropriate level of consultation. Will this change leave the assets in a better position than at present. What impact will this proposal have on the wider charitable sector, and the arts charitable sector in particular. Will these Councils be genuinely handing these assets over to people of trustworthy nature who can care for them, or is this merely a budgetary convenience that will display a misunderstanding of the role of charities in our complex world?