One of the first jobs of the new CaRT Council

[novascotianboy]

According to the Waterscape Website:

 

The appointment of the founder trustees beyond the transitional period is then subject to ratification by the charity’s Council of Representatives at its first meeting after vesting day of the new charity. The Council will also have responsibility for recruiting future trustees.

 

Do any of those standing for Council have an opinion on whether or not they are minded to ratify/approve the current trustees - in particular those from BW and Tony Hales as chair?

 

In my own humble opinion, I think the "new" trustees (i.e. the non BW ones) should be given a chance, but think the Council could send a strong signal by either not approving all of the BW Trustees and/or Hales as chair - or potentially making their roles the first to come up for renewal (i.e. after a year, say, not 4).

[greywolf]

Would the new charity be responsible for there redundancy pay and pension then or would they be payed by the government.Perhaps a probationary period of 3 months would be the way to go.

[novascotianboy]

I will check - however the new Trustees are not paid - except expenses, etc. They are not "employees" as such of the CaRT. The new Trustees who are ex-BW - it will depend on what their contracts stipulated as Directors of BW. Without the budget to hand, my recollection is that they were paid a stipend - but were not "employees" (i.e. like Robin Evans). I'll take a look later to double check unless anyone knows the answer straight away.

 

In creating the topic, I had wanted to highlight the fact that, technically, the new Council could choose not to ratify the Trustees. In general, it seems to me, the Council does not have much power and will have to use the ones they have cleverly. The power to choose and ratify the Trustees is, however, one place where they could flex their muscle.

 

It is interesting that new Trustess are being appointed NOW (i.e. pre-vesting day) so that there is a full compliment of Trustees - I would have thought a better way forward would have been to allow the new Council to choose any remaining Trustee places, rather than, as it seems, expect the new Council to ratify the Trustees at their first meeting. Given that they will meet only twice a year and the post-vesting meeting will be the first, I would be very surprised indeed if they were able to actually do anything BUT rubber stamp the new Trustees, charity arrangements, etc., as they will be put under pressure to do so (the new Charity will need Trustees...!) and, being new in their role, won't really have had an opportunity to get to grips with their new role.