New Town Trust chief makes community pledge
THE new chief executive of Stratford-upon-Avon Town Trust regards the organisation’s 2,000 members as the representatives of the community from whom the trust should “take guidance”.
Speaking to the Herald Justin Williams, said: “It is a membership organisation. The community are members of the trust.
“When I think about that, a decision is not just a decision for today, but for tomorrow’s future of Stratford, and that is the way we have to go.”
It has to be said that Mr Williams is speaking from a certain historical perspective given that he has taken over the running of an organisation whose origins go back several hundred years and pre-date the birth of William Shakespeare. It is also an organisation with assets worth around £55million, which enables it to dispense about £1million a year in discretionary grants to worthy causes in the town, as well as a statutory grant of roughly £500,000 a year to King Edward VI School (KES).
Mr Williams, a New Zealander who has worked across the spectrum of commercial, not-for-profit and charity sectors both in Britain and his native country, started his new job on Monday. He is replacing the outgoing chief executive, Helen Munro, who retires at the end of this month.
He added: “I want to run a strategy where the trust is governed by its members, to set the objectives of what they would like. I want to take guidance from the community on what are the priorities of the community.
“You cannot make a decision without listening first. Every Friday I will have an open-door policy, so people from the community can come in and have a cup of coffee, come up with ideas and have a conversation.
“That is very much the start of building a very robust membership-based trust and how we see Stratford today, tomorrow and in a few years’ time. This is a long-term operation. It is not something you decide on a three-month or six-month timescale.”
He added: “When you think what this trust has been able to do over the years, the question is: How best can we serve Stratford?” Mr Williams said that openness and transparency were essential. Some decisions would be made that were “easy”, and others because they were “right”.
Some would have “long-term objectives”. But all must be taken on the basis of what the community wanted.
“You don’t serve anyone well by not including them as part of the process,” he said.
“And it is great to hear that it is a membership base that is passionate. I see everyone in Stratford as a member. You have to serve not just the current members but the future members, and to me that is very important.”
He added: “This is a long-term trust and it must look after the members of the future’s interests not just the members of today. That is the true balancing act.
“And I want the trust to be vibrant. I don’t know what it will look like in 50 years’ time, but I would like to think it will be serving the community’s needs as it is serving the needs of the community today.”
Reiterating his point about community involvement, Mr Williams said: “The membership have the right and the responsibility to elect the trustees. What I want them to feel, when they look at the objectives of the trust, is that these are the objectives that will resonate with the community.
“I want people to be able to say: this supports our community, this protects our community and this serves our community.”
Mr Williams’s emphasis on the involvement of the community in the trust’s decision-making processes will come as welcome news to a good many people in the town who believe the organisation in recent years has been out of touch and moved in a direction that has made it hugely unpopular.
Herald Viewpoint:
