SIR, As a lifelong resident of Peebles, I have been most interested to follow the advances reported in the Peeblesshire News for the revitalisation of the trust required to run the town’s valuable asset the Chambers Institution.

This trust, set up in the 19th century, seemed to have disappeared and been lost in the amalgamations of local government.

The proposal by the new trustees to obtain charitable status for the trust, thus allowing an independent tax-free environment for the administration including powers to apply to funding sources out with local authority money, seemed such a good idea.

It was encouraging to hear of the re-appointment of trustees, included both councillors and interested Peebleans with an independent chairman. I then noted recently in the press that the trustees, with full support of Scottish Borders Council officials, had cleared all the hurdles and unscrambled the history of the trust to such an extent that the Office of Scottish Charitable Commissioners has agreed to grant the charitable status in principle which would allow the trustees to put in hand their imaginative proposals for the modernisation of the facility.

It came as a shock to read Mr Ireland’s recent letter to the Peeblesshire News intimating that all but one of the non-SBC member trustees have resigned apparently because the council members held a pre-meeting prior to a full meeting of the trustees and decided as councillors not to support their chief financial officer’s report which was to back the progress of the trust to charitable status.

This meeting was held without intimation to their colleague trustees and at the following full trustee meeting they simply intimated that they were going to withdraw the financial officer’s report.

There are substantial sums of money involved in this trust and as a former lawyer I wonder if there was, at least, a conflict of interest between their role as councillors and their role as trustees. It could well be said they were not fulfilling their onerous duty as trustees where trust interest must come first. The failure to discharge trustee’s duty brings personal liability.

Clearly the independent trustees, whose sole interest was the advancement of the trust, must have felt there was a problem. They have all resigned, bar one. I am curious to know if independent legal advice has been sought by the council trustees for their actings; what progress is now being made for the modernisation of the Chambers Institution?

Without the local input created during the two or three years of the re-vitalised trust’s existence is it reverting into the mists of centralised local authority government and losing the special local contribution.

I am, etc.

Bill Goodburn Innerleithen Road Peebles