Simon Stephens, National Trust aiming to improve workforce diversity, Museums Association, 3 September 2024

Annual report shows progress is being made but more needs to be done.

The National Trust needs to do more to diversify its workforce, according to the organisation’s annual report, which was published this week.

The report states: “Our ambition is for a broader diversity of people to be represented in the demographics of our staff and volunteers as well as our visitors, and for everyone to have a positive experience, whatever their interaction with us.

“For the first time we published our Inclusion and Diversity Report which showed that the diversity of our workforce is gradually increasing each year. But we have much more to do, especially when it comes to recruiting people of colour and disabled people.”

The trust’s drive to diversify its workforce is part of its Everyone Welcome initiative, which focuses on inclusion across the organisation.

The Everyone Welcome Inclusion and Diversity Progress Report was published last year. It showed that 3.8% of its staff were disabled people, 3% were people of colour and 6.9% identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual and other minority sexual orientations. The numbers of staff were increasing in all these categories.

The Inclusion and Diversity Report said: “These figures show that the National Trust has much more to do to become more representative of the communities it serves, particularly in relation to disability and ethnicity.”

The Everyone Welcome programme is also focusing on broadening the range of people who visit trust venues.

As part of this, the trust spent £5.5m in 2023/24 on improving physical access for disabled people, according to its annual report.

The report also showed that the trust had a 5% increase in visitor numbers to its pay for entry places in 2023/24 compared with the previous year. This represents a 12% boost in paying visitors, an increase of 332,000 in numbers.

But in the same period, National Trust memberships fell by 89,000 to 2.62 million memberships (5.38 million members), as more people moved to paying on the day. This was largely due to a decrease in new recruits at a time when fewer households can commit to annual subscriptions.

The trust said that young families, which have been hit hard by cost of living pressures, were the least likely to renew their membership in 2023/24.

However, the annual report pointed to signs in the current 2024/25 financial year that these pressures could be easing; as of the end of June 2024, National Trust memberships were up to 2.65 million (5.46 million members).

Hilary McGrady, director general of the National Trust, said: “It’s really heartening that people still want to spend time in and support amazing cultural and natural places, whether that’s immersing themselves in art or wandering through our gardens and woodlands.

“We know the cost-of-living crisis is still biting and we’ll keep doing more to give everyone a great day out. We’ve designed a new Explorer Pass, and are offering free passes where we can, for people who can’t otherwise afford to visit the places in our care.”

The annual report also showed that the trust spent £178m on the conservation of historic buildings and collections. Major projects included the completion of a 24-year project to restore 13 Gideon tapestries, the trust’s longest-ever conservation project, and rehang them at their historic home of Hardwick Hall.

The trust also continued to develop new ways to explore the history of its venues. The annual report highlighted jewellery designer Anisha Parmar’s collaborationg with Kedleston Hall to create My Adornment is My Power, an exhibition exploring heritage, identity and power through female adornment.

Parmar worked with Kedleston’s colonial collection to create films, photographs and a display of historic jewellery juxtaposed with her own contemporary designs, celebrating and reclaiming South Asian history.

McGrady said: “In the last financial year we celebrated some fantastic projects at the National Trust, but these were set against the backdrop of multiple global conflicts, the continuing effects of climate change and acute financial pressures.

In November 2023 the charity published A Climate for Change, a report that outlined how the trust is adapting the historic and natural places in its care to withstand and thrive in a rapidly changing climate.

The report explored issues such as heavier rainfall overwhelming historic guttering systems, leading to more problems with damp, and higher temperatures exacerbating humidity, leading to the spread of pests and diseases.