Tuesday 17th September
Linden Groves’ summary of the Gardens Trust AGM which addressed the difficulties raised recently due to the way the GT communicates with CGTs.
Firstly, Peter Hughes KC has completed his term of office and has now stood down as Gardens Trust Chair. He had previously intended to continue for a period in order to help hand over to a new Chair, but this summer has been extremely gruelling and so he has now stepped down with immediate effect. During his time at the Gardens Trust, Peter brought an incredible energy, enthusiasm, and willingness to revisit all our assumed ways of working, and we are incredibly grateful for all he has done.
In the next week we will be going live with a comprehensive recruitment campaign for a new Chair, which will include external advertising. We will be in touch with the recruitment pack and would be grateful if you could share it widely, or perhaps even consider applying yourselves! We intend to have a new Chair in place in the early part of 2025, but in the meantime I am confident that we can operate effectively with a rolling programme of Interim Chair from our experienced Board of Trustees.
Secondly, following representations from Yorkshire Gardens Trust it was decided to remove the Resolution to update the GT’s Articles of Association, which it had been proposed to update in order to make it easier to recruit new trustees and maintain a resilient Board. This work of course still needs to be done and we will be in touch in the coming months to seek your thoughts on appropriate further amendments.
Finally, those of you who were at the AGM will have heard me talk about many County Gardens Trusts having asked over the past few months about the need for an even closer relationship between CGTs and the Gardens Trust. We agree, and are putting together a plan of action to take forward this important but complex piece of work, for those CGTs who would like to be involved. Please bear with me at this busy time and I will be in touch as soon as possible.
Link to GT AGM reports here