“Eye-watering” payments and “chaos” – former Dartington finance staff speak out
As soundbites go, it seemed good.
Asked to explain why Dartington Hall Trust was so late in filing its accounts, its chair pinned much of the blame on “museum pieces” – outdated accounting systems that he said staff in the finance department were forced to work with due to lack of investment by the previous management.
Lord David Triesman may not however have expected the strong negative reaction to his comments in November from former members of Dartington’s finance team, all of whom left during the turmoil of 2023 when the world-famous charity underwent a dramatic restructuring to stave off what Triesman reckoned could be potential bankruptcy.

While the ex-employees contested the Labour peer’s remarks on the trust’s IT, they also also gave personal accounts of what took place inside the charity as Triesman and a team of consultants pushed through big changes to cut costs.
Unflattering
Much of the narrative from these people is far from flattering about the people now running Dartington – but is strongly refuted by a spokesperson for the trust who also said statements about the value of payments to the consultants were “incorrect, inflated” and based on “incomplete information”.
In interviews, four former senior members of the Dartington finance department, plus one other person formerly employed in a top position at the trust and knowledgable about the finance operations, have given what Totnes Pulse believes is a credible, though partial, description of the changes inside the trust. Most of these people left the trust towards the end of 2023. They had key roles in preparing accounts and settling invoices, including personal payments to the consultants.
Consultants
While these individuals’ accounts are clearly skewed towards the past – the events they discuss happened more than a year ago – the details provide insights into the ideas being used to run the trust now. All but one of the four consultants who were in place in late 2023 continue to have a role. In the year to July 2024, staff at the trust fell from 360 to about 200. Dartington has declined to say how many people it employs now either in total or in the finance department.
They are part of the solution…
Most of the five ex-Dartington people interviewed for this article said they agreed with Triesman’s central line at the start of his tenure in early 2023 that a big switch in strategy was needed to enable the charity to survive.
“The previous plans [at the trust] were over-optimistic,” one person said. “I had high expectations [of the ideas that it seemed Triesman and his team might introduce]. But the change was not managed well. In my career I have never encountered people [the consultants running Dartington] who would treat staff in such an unprofessional way and with zero humanity.”
Other people interviewed said staff members had been treated in a “brutal” manner while one complained of bullying behaviour as part of an effort to encourage employees to sign new “variable hours” contracts which offered “flexibility” but no guarantee of work.
The Trust said : “We refute any allegations of bullying behaviour by consultants. Plenty of [trust] staff did, and still do, their jobs properly. Many excellent staff predate the team of consultants and we are pleased to have them. They are part of the solution and were clearly not part of the problem.
“A number of former staff will have enjoyed the relaxed, ‘something will turn up’ management culture that helped bring Dartington to the brink. That was unsustainable and represented job risk. Understandably, people have left, either for job security or to replicate a ‘no pressure to perform’ role elsewhere.”
On the ‘variable hours’ contracts offered to staff the trust said that for many staff the contracts had turned out well, in that they ended up working more hours than before and were paid more.
Triesman and Robert Fedder – brought in as interim chief executive officer in June 2023 – say their main aim now is to put the charity’s operations on a new footing through using its buildings for new economically viable ventures, often in partnership with outside groups, while cutting loss-making activities.
Plenty of staff did, and still do, their jobs properly

Examples of such new thinking include the revamping of the popular Green Table café under the management of successful local businessman Mark Annear of the Cott Inn and the opening of a new gym in former arts buildings. Last year Dartington said the new strategy seemed to be working and the trust was on course to “break even” by the end of 2024. It has supplied no update.
The airing of the views of the former staff members comes shortly after the Charity Commission, a government regulator, started a regulatory compliance case against Dartington. This is likely to involve the charity’s trustees being quizzed about recent activities at the trust, while also examining why the accounts for the year to August 31 2023 are more than six months late.
The accounts should, by the commission’s schedule, have been filed and made public by June 30 last year. According to the timetable of Companies House, another regulator, the accounts are more than four months late, triggering a £750 fine. When the accounts appear, they may provide new information on the trust’s finances in 2023 while also detail payments to some of the consultants hired to take control.
In their interviews the ex-employees made the following points:
- The claim by Triesman about the inadequacy of the trust’s IT systems for accounting was described as “ridiculous” and “nonsense” by the former staff members. One said: “We didn’t need a whizz-bang [computer] system. What we had did the job. It had enabled the trust to bring out accounts before & it could adequately have done the job again.”
- A more credible reason for the late filing of the accounts for 2022/23 was a “bodged” effort to outsource financial reporting at the trust to an outside group, Surrey-based Isosceles Finance. One former employee said: “There was little effort to integrate the two teams [staff at Dartington and in Isosceles]. The process of change was marked by incompetence.” Isosceles staff started working with Dartington in summer 2023, the former employees say. The company’s formal engagement by the trust started in September of that year and ended the following May. Isosceles said it had worked at Dartington “to deliver a range of operational accounting and related services for their [the charity’s] 2023/24 financial year, including supporting an accounting system upgrade for the management of the Trust’s 2023/24 and future accounts.” It added: “We are confident in our ability to work successfully within different cultures and organisational structures, and were pleased to be able to support the Dartington Hall Trust through this period.”
- Efforts to create acceptable accounts for 2022/23 were hampered by the exit of virtually all of Dartington’s financial staff during 2023. Numbers in the department dropped from 10-12 in March to one person in December. “A lot of knowledge [about the operations of the trust across a range of activities from education to retailing] was lost,” said one former employee.
Many of the staff in the finance department and elsewhere in the organisation left the charity after being offered a choice either to start new ‘variable hours’ contracts which carried no guarantee of work, or face dismissal. “People [in the finance department] were angry and despondent,” said one ex-employee. “Many wanted to get out.”
- A drive during 2023 to transfer the charity’s financial reporting from the existing system called Pegasus Opera 3 to a new set of software, Xero, was poorly managed and led to “chaos”, one person said. The rationale for doing this was that Xero is a more modern system used by many organisations which requires less manual entry of data than older software and so is more efficient. While introducing it to Dartington might have seemed a good idea, to do this during a time of huge change inside the finance department, with many staff leaving, might not have been entirely sensible. From the details provided by the ex-employees, an effort was made to use Xero in the 2022/23 accounts, while it was lined up as the main tool for the 2023/24 accounts starting September 1.
- With the previous five-strong top management at the charity – including the chief executive plus heads of finance, human resources, education and arts – all leaving during 2023, the charity ended up being run by a team of consultants assembled by Triesman in conjunction with his longtime business associate David Buchler, who is chairman of Buchler Phillips, a London restructuring and insolvency business. Many of the consultants were paid at “eye watering” rates that were inappropriate for a charity with financial problems, a former staff member said.
- Consultants hired in 2023 included (as well as Fedder) Adrian Walters to look after finance, Amanda Browne covering personnel and Chris Carr-Barney, whose role covered commercial operations. Payments for these four individuals – plus those to other contractors assisting on the changes, chiefly Buchler Phillips and US legal firm BCLP – totalled some £400,000 for the three months to August 2023, said one former member of staff. Another ex-employee who was involved with payments said £150,000 had been paid out over four months from mid-2023 for the four consultants, with many of them working less than full-time.
No Names Please?
All the five ex-Dartington people interviewed for this article requested anonymity on the grounds that being identified as a “whistle blower” at a previous employer might jeopardise future career prospects.
Discussing the late filing of the 2022/23 accounts the trust said : “Filing accounts for an organisation that was on the brink of financial collapse at the end of the period for those accounts is not a straightforward matter. It involves careful consideration by auditors, trustees and others about the status of the complex restructuring underway and prospects for further recovery.
“We have kept the Charity Commission and Companies House updated regularly. Clearly if this had been a question of just completing the accounts and pressing ‘send’ it would have been done a long time ago.”
On the “chaos” that the former staff members said existed in the finance department in 2023 the said: “Any ‘chaos’ in the transition was a function of earlier poor commercial decisions compounded by antiquated financial reporting. Isosceles was brought in as a temporary measure for day-to-day financial management and Xero is one of the most widely used modern accounting systems; it is easy to use and relatively inexpensive.
“Shortage of on-the-ground finance staff was a problem and, once an interim chief financial officer [Philip Owen] came on board in January 2024, this resource was addressed.”
Not Credible
On the issue of payments to consultants working for Dartington the trust said the figures mentioned by the ex-employees were “not credible”, and that “all consultants/contractors are providing services at rates well below both market rates and their own usual fees, mindful that Dartington has limited funds”.
Of the consultants hired in 2023, Walters stopped working for Dartington in early 2024, the trust said. While the trust did not want to discuss Browne and Carr-Barney, they are believed still to be working for the charity. Neither the Dartington spokesperson nor Triesman wanted to answer a question about whether Triesman had been incorrect in his points about the capabilities of the IT systems . Walters, Browne, Carr-Barney, Buchler and individual trustees all declined to comment.
**Dartington has announced the resignation of its longest serving trustee, Sylvie Pierce, who was appointed to this role in December 2014. The resignation brings the number of trustees to just five, including Triesman. None of the trustees receive payment.
Thank you for reporting on this important local issue
Good heavens above. Another amazing article on the “inside story” of Dartington using five people who remain anonymous throughout. Has there been any story in the last two years critical of the current trustees, where sources are named and quoted? No. We’ve had former trustees, former employees, former fairies from the gardens for all we know, all hiding behind each other and saying nasty things behind their hands on condition they’re not named.
Shame on you, Totnes Pulse, for this ongoing weasely campaign of denigration of Dartington. Your reasons in the past for using anonymous sources were barely credible. This is just laughable.
Hi Jane, I used to work at Darlington in the finance department and I’ve been following this story. Everything from the anonymous sources in this story matches my recollections. I’m not anonymous though so hopefully you will be satisfied now and hopefully a bit appalled by the way the the new management have treated the staff. Thanks.
Hi Dale, were you part of the finance team who decided to leave the Trust in Oct/ Nov 2023? Are you able to provide some detail on what the financial accounts were like for the year to September 2023 (ie the overdue accounts)? Did the team collectively decide to walk away before the ‘consultants’ were able to fully uncover all the issues for which they were inherited caused by the previous team?
I agree with Jane’s comments above and it is disappointing to see this ongoing negativity directed at the Trust and wish that the local community began to offer its support instead.
Issues at Dartington have been well known for many, many years, and I respect this new team for now making the difficult decisions to try to ensure its long-term stability and future.
Hey Peter. Essentially the entire team left in 2023 because the ‘consultants’ forced everyone onto “zero hour” contracts (contracts with no guaranteed minimum hours) with the option of signing the new employment contracts or being dismissed. This was untenable so we were forced to leave, otherwise I believe many would have stayed. This same change was forced upon all of the staff across the entire trust by the way.
I don’t disagree that difficult decisions had to be made and the trusts financial struggles were widely known, but I don’t believe this is a fair way to treat people.