Nationalise the National Trust

As well as just houses and gardens, the National Trust cares for nationally-significant collections of objects, books, archives, photographs, paintings, and more – so the prospect of the losing expert librarians, archaeologists and curators is deeply worrying.

Many are worried such losses will be reproduced across our regional museums—at exactly the moment when local heritage is more important than ever. In this new era of home-working and changing patterns of travel and tourism, how we value and invest in heritage needs to keep pace.

The longstanding centralisation of government culture funding in London-based national museums is out of step with the new, more devolved landscape that will be a critical part of how Britain recovers both economically and socially.

In my view, DCMS should re-distribute London-centric funding away from national museums, to expand the resources available to care for collections across the UK – including those schemes to which the National Trust can apply. Or in this case—simply nationalise the National Trust.