Trust status

Simon Jenkins is friendly enough, but there is a long list of subjects that can make the chairman of the National Trust very cross. Maybe it's the result of his many years as a newspaper columnist, a discipline that lives or dies on the strength of robust views.

One of his targets is museums, and the fact that they have so much hidden away in their stores. "I think museums are still regarded as the personal fiefdoms of their directors and that is just wrong," says Jenkins, who became National Trust chairman in November last year.

"A museum is primarily about the conservation and display of fine things - they do not belong to the museum staff or their trustees, they belong to the community in which that museum is located. And I just think it is wrong for anything not to be on show that could be on show. If you can't put it on show in your museum, give it to somewhere that needs it."

Jenkins says his views were put into sharp focus while visiting more than 1,000 properties to research his 2003 book England's Thousand Best Houses.

"A very large number of the houses in the book are museums," says Jenkins. "The number of places that cry out for just a dozen of the things in the basements of the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), the National Portrait Gallery or the National Gallery. I thought it was tragic."

Another museum issue that angers him is free entry, which he opposes for two reasons.

"I think that people value things for which they have paid. Two hundred schoolchildren packing the National Gallery, yelling and running around and spoiling it for everyone else - perhaps if they paid they might value it a bit more.

"Secondly, I just think that by paying you liberate the management with lots of money. During the last 10 years, when British culture has been booming, people have been pouring into places for which they have to pay, such as theatres and cinemas. But the museum sector has been perpetually moaning and whinging and in many cases they are total blighted. The fact is they've got no money."

Jenkins points to the number of museums in mainland Europe that are not free and also says charging gives organisations more flexibility.

"The reason for charging is to let people in free. With the National Trust, you can pay to come in, or you are a member. If you are a member you get in free, and you suddenly feel privileged. Alright, you have given a one-off payment, but you are then in a category of people who get in for nothing and that is attractive."

If Jenkins gets annoyed about museum directors, he reserves his real anger for architects. He admits to agreeing with Prince Charles, who is a frequent critic of the profession.

"It is just extraordinary how inadequate modern architecture has been in the sensitive rehabilitation of cities compared with the Germans or the French or anywhere - we just haven't got it. The kind of casual littering of the townscape with skyscrapers, just to show off. The bloody things are empty; it is ridiculous. In that respect we have gone backwards."

It's well-known that Jenkins is opinionated and he has criticised the National Trust in the past. So what does someone with such forthright views offer the trust? Is there a danger that he will go off-message and pursue his own agenda?

His predecessor at the trust, William Proby, is a chartered accountant who was educated at Eton and Oxford and is a former president of the Historic Houses Association. This is the type of person more traditionally associated with chairing a grand institution such as the National Trust.

But despite his outspoken nature, Jenkins is not an anti-establishment figure. Like Proby, he was educated at Oxford and his career has included stints working for that ultimate establishment newspaper, the Times.

On his appointment, National Trust director-general Fiona Reynolds said Jenkins would "be a powerful advocate for our work". He can certainly be this, as he has a long history of campaigning for conservation issues.

He was one of the founders of Save Britain's Heritage, which was formed in 1975 to protect historic buildings, and he has been involved in a variety of other campaigns to protect the UK's built environment.

He has also served on a bewildering range of government and non-governmental bodies. These include periods as the deputy chairman of English Heritage, as a Millennium commissioner and on the boards of British Rail and London Transport.

Another thing in his favour is that he knew the trust well before his appointment. While writing his historic houses book, he visited all the National Trust properties in England and Wales, giving him an excellent snapshot of its estate.

"I did about 1,000 houses and about a third of them were National Trust, so I was in a position to make a direct comparison between the trust houses and other houses. It did give me a view of the trust that I found very helpful."

Jenkins says he quickly learned to recognise a trust property, and knew he was going to be well-looked after and there would be certain standards of conservation and horticulture. "There was nothing I would rather simplistically call vulgar and there was always a nice cup of tea", he says.

"Those are assets without price, having seen other houses. But with that undoubtedly went a danger of sameness, a feeling that there was a National Trust look. I think one of the great exercises that the trust is now involved in, and I think it relates to the museum world as well, is to try and get the best of a minimum level of standards while at the same time trying to allow the houses to breathe."

But combining individuality with the need to set certain standards, and doing all this within the context of a large bureaucracy, is not easy.

This was shown earlier this year by a BBC television series about Adam Nicolson's struggles to change Sissinghurst, the National Trust property in Kent that was home to his grandmother, the writer Vita Sackville-West. But Jenkins is all too aware that he is working for a complex institution.

"This is a very, very big charity and you have to come to terms with the fact that you are running, or you are chairing, a body that has 5,000 staff, 55,00 volunteers, 3.6 million members and the largest non-governmental estate in the country.

Inevitably it has the features of very large national organisations. It has local, regional and national tiers of activity. It has a substantial bureaucracy, each tier of which irritates the other tier. The job of the trustees is to get them pointed in the same direction and working together."

His debates with fellow trustees should be interesting, particularly with those from the museum sector. V&A director Mark Jones, and Sue Davies, who set up the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre in Buckinghamshire, are both on the board. But Jenkins is obviously not afraid of a heated debate, and feels the trust's strength of purpose can carry it through.

"You argue fiercely about how you get to the destination you are seeking, but there is a real sense of common purpose," he says.

Whether Jenkins will change the trust that much remains to be seen. Senior figures can expect some disagreement over one of its priorities, tacking climate change, which Jenkins seems sceptical about.

"One of the difficulties is that not a year goes past without some maxim changing. You can chop down trees one year, it's a bad thing the next year, and a good thing the year after. So it's quite difficult to formulate a decision for a very large organisation when opinion does still differ quite widely."

Whatever the topic, Jenkins will argue his case robustly. He has criticised the trust while on the outside, and there is no reason to suppose he will stop doing this now he is on the inside. But the trust is big enough to withstand a bit of criticism and might even benefit from it.