Governance review

2015 marked the 10th anniversary of the introduction of the Trust’s current governance arrangements. The Board and the Council concluded that this was a good moment to pause, think about whether things are working well and, if necessary, decide how they could be improved further.

In 2005 we made major changes to our governance arrangements. These included the establishment of the Board of Trustees. During 2014/15 the Board and Council agreed to use the ten-year anniversary of those changes to review their success and to determine whether further change was desirable. A number of recommendations were developed about which National Trust members were consulted during 2015/16.

They were also discussed at the 2015 Annual General Meeting. Where required, members voted on the changes and supported them. The Board and the Council also agreed all the changes.

The main changes included:

a reduction in the size of the Council from 52 members to 36 members (to be achieved by 2018);
clarification of the role of the Council;
the general principle that Council members’ tenure should be a maximum of two terms of three years;
that there should be a minimum of four Council members on the Board of Trustees including the Chairman and Deputy Chairman (the previous requirement was for a majority of Trustees to be Council members)
that the Council’s Nomination Committees for the appointment of Trustees, Chairman and Deputy Chairman should include a Board member.

Where required, these changes have been reflected in amendments to The Charities (National Trust) Order 2005. These and other changes will be reflected in the Trust’s Governance Handbook. The latter is the Board and Council’s compendium of governance policy and process.