A PROPOSAL to hand over the management of Glasgow’s museums – including the recently reopened Kelvingrove Art Gallery – to an umbrella culture and leisure services trust has been criticised by a prestigious journal.

Museum experts have warned against plans to transfer all culture and leisure services to management by a charitable trust, announced by Glasgow City Council last month.

An editorial in the October edition of the Museums Journal warns of troubles faced by other local authorities when they handed the management of their museums over to a trust, commenting: “It seems odd that a city where so much success has been attached to the museum service, and where the general public is so fiercely attached to its museums, that the council should consider this move.”

Sharon Heal, the journal’s editor, claims that “the picture is not rosy” for other local authorities which have opted to manage culture and leisure departments under one umbrella trust. Referring to a recent report which looked at the 22 councils in England and Wales that have already made the move, she noted that Hounslow Council’s Gunnersbury Park Museum remained in urgent need of refurbishment after eight years of trust management and a trust in Wigan has closed two of its flagship museums altogether.

The report, which was published earlier this year and examines local authorities in England and Wales that have handed over cultural assets to a trust in the past 15 years, showed that substantial savings under charitable management are unlikely.

Adrian Babbidge, author of the study, told the Sunday Herald that independent museum trusts could work well but warned that umbrella management for leisure and culture organisations performed poorly in comparison.

He said: “All the evidence is that the successful trusts are the ones that are independent and the ones which are less effective bring different organisations under one umbrella management. It must make sense for local authorities to think about culture and leisure services together, but when you come to delivery it is a different matter. It might be better to have a board focusing on museum issues rather than the whole sector.

“The museums in Glasgow are part of the largest local authority service in the whole of the UK. It is worth thinking about it being part of something else. It could be run as the National Museums of Scotland in Edinburgh are. They should be the same kind of organisation, the only difference being that the funding for one comes from the Scottish Executive and the funding for the other comes from the local authority.”

Babbidge added that trusts could attract more donations as a charitable organisation than as a local authority, but that social enterprise was not a sure bet for increasing funds. “The savings only come in the long term once the trustees can operate the museum in a way that keeps up with the growth of the economy, but the council must fund according to this growth too,” he said.

He also warned of rushing plans through without proper thought and consultation.

A business plan outlining how a trust would manage Glasgow’s leisure facilities, from swimming pools to museums and libraries, will be presented to the city council for debate in January. The council department – which is headed by Bridget McConnell, the wife of first minister Jack McConnell – is currently responsible for 140 leisure facilities, including Kelvingrove, the Burrell Collection, and the Gallery of Modern Art.

GLASGOW City Council spends £13 million a year on its museums, with no additional income from external sources and no funding from the Scottish Executive.

Extra funds have been raised from grant and charity bodies for major capital projects such as the restoration of Kelvingrove and the new Riverside Museum, plus phase two of the Glasgow Museums Resource Centre. Kelvingrove Art Gallery costs some £2m a year to run while the Gallery of Modern Art in the city centre costs approximately £1.2m a year.

The council claims that transferring management of the culture and leisure services could save the department around £9.7m a year, mostly from reduced business rates. It is also thought that private donors would be more likely to give money to a charitable trust than to a council department.

However, trade unions have attacked the plans, claiming that the move is a penny-pinching exercise designed to offset the council’s costly equal pay decision, which is being backdated to compensate female employees who had been paid less than male colleagues doing the same job.

John Devine, convener for culture and leisure services at the Glasgow branch of public sector union Unison, said: “This is entirely a money-saving exercise to do with equal pay shortfalls. This is what the council has told us. The trust move will save £10m a year, part of which will go towards the ongoing equal pay dispute.”

Other critics fear that a trust board might not be as accountable as council managers and that problems associated with local authority governance could merely be passed on to the new charity management.

Julian Spalding, former director of Glasgow museums, was “very concerned” about the council’s proposals: “These museums belong to Glasgow and this trust would further remove it from the Glasgow people. I can’t see what the advantages are.”

Museums would not gain any entrepreneurial edge under general leisure services management, he said. “If they are part of a huge trust they are going to get lost in a vast organism. If what they were creating was an independent trust that might work, but this trust would be mammoth. Glasgow cultural and leisure services is bigger than a lot of local authorities. The only financial benefit looks to be that they will not have to adhere to local government employment laws, which could be very bad for the staff.”

APOSTIVE review of Kelvingrove Art Gallery at the Museums Association annual conference last week led some people to question the council’s move towards a trust on the back of the gallery’s success.

Jane Morris, a judge for the European Museum of the Year awards and a member of the review panel, said that Kelvingrove’s refurbishment was “an exceptionally successful project” but argued that council funding would have to be sustained if Kelvingrove’s flexible exhibitions were to be well maintained.

“This is one of the best projects that we have seen come through from the Lottery Heritage Fund,” she said. To make it work it needs ongoing investment. Glasgow has always had a problem in that it has collections of national and international standard.

“There are some very significant collections, more like a national museum in Edinburgh or London than some other city’s cultural services. The council will no doubt consider its funding to be generous but it is inadequate compared to what it really needs. I can see the problem. Glasgow has a lot of issues and the council has limited funds.”

Despite the warnings, others in the arts establishment have welcomed Glasgow’s plans. Scottish Arts Council chairman Richard Holloway said the plans could offer a future model for other city councils: “This seems to be quite an imaginative response to problems in the cultural sector. I think they are doing this to save quite a bit of tax, and anything that will avoid crippling the cultural sector is a good idea ... although we will have to wait until January for the full picture.”

Mark O’Neill, head of culture and leisure services for Glasgow City Council said: “There are examples of the charitable trust being successful in places like York and Sheffield. They work very well. We can learn from their experience, but the decision will be a matter of policy for the council.”

A spokesman for Glasgow City Council said: “All of our cultural assets will remain the property of the people of Glasgow. This move will release resources which can be reinvested in frontline services.”