“Museum pieces” slowing down the late accounts at Dartington

The chair of Dartington Hall Trust has pinned some of the blame for the continuing delay in filing its accounts on outdated computer systems at the charity, arguing the machines and
accounting software at the trust were “museum pieces” and resulted from “minuscule investment “ by previous management.

Lord David Triesman – who took over as head of the under-pressure charity in March last year – said in an emailed statement to Totnes Pulse it had told the government regulator for charities “that we will get to a genuinely useful report [and accounts] as fast as we humanly can”.

The Labour peer added : “I think they [the Charity Commission] are also keen it [the annual report] is genuinely useful which makes good sense to them. I think we are quite close. There’s nothing to hide and the delay is a push for proper transparency and not concealment.”

I do worry that some people will not see just what a mountain we are climbing.

Dartington’s annual report and accounts for the year to August 31 2023 should have been filed and made public by June 30 this year according to the commission’s rules, making it roughly five months overdue.

The trust also must file its accounts with another state regulator – Companies House – and is currently some three months behind schedule, incurring a fine that gradually increases as the delay lengthens. The Charity Commission has no power to issue fines for late filings but can issue private reprimands.

The 2022/23 accounts are of particular interest as they are expected to shed light on why Triesman decided – soon after he took over chair from previous chair Greg Parston – that the charity’s finances were in a dire state and that without radical action it might slide into bankruptcy. A big cost reduction programme followed involving a hefty trimming of staff, giving what Dartington says is a base for recovery.

As part of its efforts the trust has courted controversy, cancelling in its conventional form its long-running music festival and music school, and effectively serving notice on Schumacher College, an admired educational centre on the estate that Dartington has argued has been a financial burden.

Triesman’s crisis measures in mid 2023 surprised many observers since the charity’s previous annual report for 2021/22 had said the trust was in little danger of insolvency, arguing that while it had financial difficulties, they were manageable.

At the time of Triesman’s arrival as chair, the trust was hit by the departure of both its previous chief executive and finance director, Alan Boldon and Ian Trisk-Grove, as a result of which Triesman brought in a new management team, assisted by Buchler Phillips, a London-based consultancy specialising in rescuing stricken companies. The consultancy is run by David Buchler, a long-time business contact of Triesman.

Next year the Dartington estate is due to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the institution in its modern guise following the 1925 purchase of the medieval hall and surrounding countryside by wealthy US-based visionaries Dorothy and Leonard Elmhirst. After this the benefactors turned the estate into a path-breaking centre for arts, agriculture and industry that earned it global renown and a stream of visiting luminaries keen to learn from its example.

While Triesman has a good opinion of the trust’s vaunted history he has been damning about what he says was poor oversight by the trust’s management immediately before his takeover. Triesman said in his emailed statement : “We [the new management team] were working with both [computer hardware] and software which were museum pieces. .. I take my hat off to the IT team who got any of it to work at all.”

Triesman said the deficiencies were a result of “minuscule investment” in IT and accounting systems by previous senior people.

Fleshing out previous explanations from the current management about the trust’s financial position, Triesman said that after he took charge in 2023 “if was clear that a new strategic model was needed to drive the estate through cash neutrality to commercial security.”

The peer added : “We would have to redesign our IT to accommodate and report accurately this reality. The alternative would have been to continue to replicate past mistakes and there’s certainly no point in that. It can’t be right to lose money on every single activity and I’m glad to say that our financial and other partners are aligned with our current strategy.”

In his efforts to explain the reasons for the late filing of the accounts Triesman has been supported by some outside financial practitioners who say in some circumstances it is better for charities and companies to publish well-informed and coherent reports that are late, rather than to rush into filing details that are poorly presented and fail to give a complete picture.

A specialist in charity finances – who asked not to be named – told Totnes Pulse :
“In general, auditors [of charities and companies] are being far more diligent at present (given the high profile fines by regulators for failings) so a lot of companies are finding more scrutiny and hence delays in filing accounts as the auditors are trying to minimise risk particularly if the management information is poor leading to more work being required.”

In other comments Triesman – who is 81 and recovering in hospital from illness – said : “I hope current difficulties won’t undermine confidence at least among those who understand where we started from and what we want to achieve… I do worry that some people will not see just what a mountain we are climbing.”

On what he says is a need for transparency Triesman said :”My ambition is to provide utterly reliable data, be willing to discuss it, and to demonstrate its relevance to our strategy rather than our history of financial carelessness.”

Parston, Boldon and Trisk-Grove have all been unwilling to give Totnes Pulse on-the-record comments on their views of the measures put in train by Triesman. The trust’s financial auditor – the Plymouth office of accountants Bishop Fleming, which had this role under the pre-2023 management and remains in post – has not responded to requests to comment.