Dartington Hall Trust: Trustee changes

The Trust is providing an update regarding its Board of Trustees.

Rachel Watson, who joined the Board in June 2020, has decided to resign after almost five years of service.

As a matter of priority, we are actively engaged in finding additional, appropriately qualified trustees. David Lovett joined the Trust board in April 2025. Mr Lovett knows Dartington Hall well and lives in a neighbouring town. In addition, his extensive corporate experience and professional background as a Chartered Accountant is highly relevant to our plans for recovery and sustainability. He will chair our audit and risk committee.

We understand the need to recruit and look forward to announcing further trustee appointments in the very near future. A number of strong candidates have been interviewed. The Charity Commission is aware of this process and is being updated by the Trust.

DHT is also briefing the Commission on previous financial management, pre-turnaround. However, it has not been possible for the Board to speak with one voice regarding this issue, since post-2023 trustees and executive management have little or no insight into the situation, beyond the hard facts presented by the numbers:
• From 2008 and the financial year ending August 2023 the Trust reported, in Companies House filings, cumulative losses of close to £50 million
• Between 2020 and 2023 the Trust sold property and land totalling more than £14 million in value, including a £2.7m transaction that commenced in 2022/23 but did not complete until 2024.
• The present Chair and management team have, to date, initiated property and land sales totalling only £100,000.
The Charity Commission has, in recent weeks, asked present trustees if they feel that action could have been taken sooner to improve the charity’s underlying financial performance, rather than relying on the sale of properties and investments, or on unpredictable benefaction. The answer from this Board is unequivocally yes.
It is self-evident that many wholly owned and operated activities were poorly managed for many years, with little sector expertise, nor a grasp of the need to recover costs. The provision of such activities is now migrating to a landlord model, with experienced operators as tenants of the Trust. This approach removes the risk to the Trust of trading failure, while establishing reliable rental income. Separately, the acceptance of significant losses in Schumacher College, subsidised by the Trust to its own existential detriment, was not sustainable and current trustees and executive believe this could have been addressed far earlier.
Change is never easy, particularly when it needs to be radical, and invariably meets resistance, including from former trustees. Nonetheless, after a great deal of hard work and difficult decisions since September 2023, DHT has successfully been hauled back from the brink of insolvency.

Rt Hon Lord (David) Triesman
Chair