It's time to have another look at Carloway Estate Trust accounts. These accounts are the latest available and are for the accounting year ending 31 March 2019. For some reason or other the accounts are not on the Carloway Estate Trust website so we had to look at the accounts registered with Companies House.
Before looking at the accounts we had a look first of all at the Trust website. The last Newsletter thereon is dated October 2019 and the last Board Minutes also were dated October 2019 - 09 October to be precise - that's almost a year now without our hearing anything. We are aware of Covid and all that but, since all sorts of people are 'working from home', or something similar, we wonder why there has been so little information for the public and especially as our area has been Covid-free from the beginning? It doesn't readily make sense.
What we liked about the Board Minutes was the warning attached that 'Sensitive details will be removed prior to publication'!!! Quite, Mr Chairman, secret old Western Isles Council habits die hard, very hard!!! 'Sensitive details' can cover a multitude of sins and what is one man's 'sensitive details' may be another man's bread and butter. One thing is sure and that is that the Board obviously does not trust us, the public, with too much information coming our way.
And who is going to decide what 'sensitive details' are in any particular case? No wonder there is growing clamour for 'community' organisations like Carloway Estate Trust to be completely open under Freedom of Information laws.
Anyway, back to the accounts. Estate trading income - comprising wayleaves, leases, croft rents, land sales and angling tickets - was a paltry £15,058 for the year. It is just as well that the Trust received the astonishing sum of £125,057 in public grants, including a grant of £39,907 from Highlands and Islands Enterprise ie the Highlands and Islands Development Board as was. Without those grants the Trust would never have got off the ground.
These so-called community landlords devour public money at an alarming rate and it is simply not right that we taxpayers have to foot the bill for what is, essentially, a big ego trip for others. Were the Trust a private, rather than a community, landlord, it would have to stand on its own two feet with no grant at all from the public purse. It is simply as unsustainable as it is wrong to keep community landlords going at such vast expense on the public purse.
One final word. The sale of angling tickets brought in a grand total of £513 for the year. An angling season lasts from March to October so that a division of that figure by 8 gives a monthly average of £64 in ticket sales, or £2 per day.
That Carloway Estate Trust is dependent on charity to survive is way beyond embarrassing. This whole project is a shambles. 'Twas ever going to be thus - and as we said at the beginning.
No comments:
Post a Comment