Indications have been growing for some months that the RSPB is in trouble but it’s no use hiding it any more. Many organisations go through what seem like interminable reviews, and RSPB has had its share in the past decade or so, but this one is pretty serious.
The jobs of hundreds of staff have been reviewed, some posts and people are going, others are having to choose between new jobs they don’t much fancy and not having a job at all.
Core areas of work, such as nature reserves are not exempt from this process. I’ve heard from several staff and volunteers that some nature reserves are being mothballed and some might be on the market for disposal.
School programmes on nature reserves are under threat, as are other areas of work where grants have kept things going.
There is more, but that’s enough to give a flavour of what is happening.
Why is it happening? It’s apparently driven by financial issues. I can’t spot the signs of impending trouble in these figures on the Charity Commission website – click here – can you?
It’s difficult not to speculate on what has gone wrong. Did LIARgate have an impact? Have we reached the time when Brexit kicks in and EU funding finally disappears for many projects? Are RSPB members simply drifting away? Has there been some expensive recent project, perhaps a recruitment campaign, that has bombed? Or, quite possibly, none of these. Or quite possibly, all of them.
These events might explain what otherwise seems a strange move to bring in a completely new Council member to be Chair of Council at the impending RSPB AGM – click here. I don’t know anything about Sir Andrew Cahn than what I read here but he seems an unusual choice to be parachuted in, if the members vote for him, to become Chair of Council. It is rare for that post to be filled by anyone who has not served their time as an ‘ordinary’ member to get to know the organisation. This suggests that none of current Council was moved to become Chair – unusual and not a good sign. Previous experience of the RSPB and UK nature conservation are notably missing from this pen picture. I might not vote for Sir Andrew at the online AGM. You, like me, should be a conservation investor and checking out these things is our due diligence.
I’m saddened by this apparent state of affairs and have been hoping that the glimpses of what is happening that I have had weren’t really representative but it seems that they are. My sadness is because I feel a great deal of respect for the conservation institution for whom I worked for 25 years and which I still think of as ‘us’ rather than ‘them’. I’m sad for those former colleagues of mine who are going through this and for all of their colleagues who I don’t know at all, and, indeed, for the senior staff and Council who have to manage this.
Let’s hope that things aren’t as bad as they seem, and that even if they are then the RSPB can make a full recovery.
I heard yesterday that I am registered for the online AGM in a couple of weeks time. I will be listening intently.
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I don’t think it matters if he has not come up through the ranks. We need to have confidence in the processes that the board had in place to select this person. Who seems to have a good range of skill sets. It is the leadership skills that are important in this role. Especially if difficult decisions will need to be made by the board. Every organisation whether it’s a company, a charity or a government body go through these machinations of having to review and sharpen up operations to ensure that it can be sustainable in the long term and deliver its charity objectives. People do not like change. But sometimes this is necessary. Looking at the longer term all would do well to plan for different fiscal scenarios. We know that the health of the economy is related to the income generation potential in the voluntary sector. Cycles of boom and bust in terms of economic growth and recessions. Interest rates are higher now so that’s good for investments. Will membership growth continue once boomers have popped their clogs? Etc!!!
When I click on your Charity Commission link I get a CC page which says ‘You do not have the roles required to access this portlet. ‘
Hi Mark. I’m glad you are on the case. I heard yesterday that two or three nature reserves are being considered for sale. That would be the end for me and the RSPB if it went ahead (after 60 years).
I spoke to the Lodge this morning. They confirmed that a major review is underway with staff being consulted but could give no definitive answer on possible sales of reserves. I asked if members would be consulted but they could not say. The accounts for last year give no hint of financial trouble but they spent less than £1m on land purchase.
I think the problem is that the current leadership do not value the reserves in the way that we do. They are more concerned with ‘global’ stuff – RSPB are involved with bog restoration in Iceland for example which is great if the money is there. Leaving the theoretical pension deficit aside, I do not believe there is a shortage of money. They have just decided to spend it in areas other than the reserves.
I hope that the RSPB council and leadership can be made to change tack and that you will do all you can to make this happen. I registered for the agm with no trouble. Bob
Without knowing which reserves are being considered or the reasons why, or indeed who they might be sold to (as a crude example another conservation organisation would be a very different proposition to an open-cast coal mining business!) one can only speculate but I can at least conceive of a reserve sale being a rational decision. If sale of reserves is necessitated by financial problems I am not sure how helpful it would be to terminate your membership if you still agree with the overall objects of the charity.
I would be wary of playing ‘global’ activities off against local ones. A wader wintering/migrating along our coasts is a ‘British’ bird but it is also an Icelandic bird and a French bird and perhaps a Mauritanian bird. If it is encountering problems in any of the places it passes through during its annual cycle it is relevant to us so it seems perfectly reasonable to be involved in conservation work in Iceland. Personally, I would go further – I am as concerned by the threats faced by, say, Albatrosses on oceanic islands in the southern hemisphere as I am by those faced by birds here in Britain and am happy for the RSPB to devote some of its resources to such overseas issues.
Obviously it is a concern if finances are under pressure and the organisation is in the position of having to decide which bits of its work it should cut back on.
Jonathan – wise comments as usual.
I know more, but won’t say much more until after AGM.
Bob – there was very little mention of nature reserves at last year’s AGM nor much in annual reports, so I share some of your concerns. More mention of financial reserves but no indication of problems.
It does feel as though nature reserves are getting a particularly harsh scrutiny.
But there are other changes too – challenges of whether and how to combat raptor persecution for example. Enthusiasm for having friendly chats with grouse moor owners – that only takes things back c30 years!!
I don’t think it is too difficult to see what has happened. Five years ago, in 2019, there was a big restructure called Structural Effectiveness which was supposed to put the RSPB on a sound financial footing for the future. From recollection over 250 staff left the organisation through a combination of redundancy and finding new roles elsewhere. I was one of them!
The narrative being given about this current restructure is that income has been growing but not fast enough to keep up with the growth in costs. The statistics being quoted are that it took £150 million to deliver the RSPB’s work two years ago. Today that same work will cost £165 million, a 10% cost rise.
However, it seems to me that this narrative is somewhat misleading.
If you look through the annual reports (freely accessible on the RSPB’s website) you can see that between 2019 and 2023, the average number of staff increased from 2139 to 2406 – an increase of 267. So, over the past five years, head count has been allowed to grow back to the level before Structural Effectiveness – the last big restructure.
As employing people is expensive, the salary bill (excluding NI & Pension contributions) also increased from £48.596m to £65.296m – an increase of £16.7m.
As well as the increase in the number of staff, it also looks as though average salaries have increased from £22,719 in 2019 to £27,138 in 2022 – an increase of nearly 20%. OK, some of this will be a result of annual increments and some of the increments may have been quite large due to the cost of living crisis.
However, the RSPB also seems to be employing more staff in higher salary brackets – the number of staff earning in excess of £60,000 pa has increased from 27 in 2019 to 38 in 2023. Even the CEOs salary appears to have moved from the £120,000 – £130,000 bad to the £160,000 – £170,000 band – Beccy Speight might be earning as much as Sue Gray and more than the Prime Minister!
My reading of the situation is that the financial resilience that was supposed to have been provided by the 2019 restructure was abandoned by an incoming, new CEO and a combination of unpredictable events (COVID, Ukraine, Truss’s mini-budget) has resulted in this current financial crisis.
What I find particularly sad is that it is the hard-working reserves staff who are bearing the brunt of this mismanagement. These are the folk who are out in all weathers managing habitats, engaging with visitors and being the public face of the RSPB and giving school children wonderful wildlife experiences which might stick with them for the rest of their lives and inspire them into a career in nature conservation.
Thanks Rob – and yet last year there was a v small excess of spend over income. So what has happened since?
It not just the RSPB. I’ve heard other conservation NGOs (and other NGOs) struggling too. There are more charities/groups fighting over less funding/grants. I was working for a small charity and we got funding turned down for projects the funders said would have been funded, but there were bigger priorities being matched by other grant proposals.
Couple this with increasing costs of materials, fuel and contractors etc, staff costs increasing to keep up with inflation, which adds to losses under Covid restrictions (and increased costs in this time from extra use and idiots destroying stuff), and I dare say some folk spending less in cafes/shops and reducing/cancelling memberships as the cost of living increases, its not surprising they are struggling
Neil – it is a bit surprising if you look at their accounts as it is a while from covid, but you are right that there is a lot of competition in the conservation world. Many small conservation bodies did well during covid and continue to thrive and many large ones too. Most organisations fail, or falter, because they made poor decisions (or unlucky ones).
This is upsetting and alarming news. I’m enormously fond of the RSPB and personally very grateful for their wonderful support of projects I’ve been involved in, but feel that it’s an organisation that needs to start running just to keep in the same place far less expand. Love it as I do it frustrates the hell out of me. I know they have a policy of NOT highlighting raptor persecution in general on their stalls at open events because it’s felt to be too ‘strong’ an issue for the public – I couldn’t disagree more with that. I struggle to think of anything that shows how arrogant and ridiculous humanity’s approach to nature is than the illegal killing of some birds so other ones can be shot for fun. It’s like having a howitzer, but putting it aside to use a pea shooter instead.
Even worse is that at an nature event in a deprived, lower income area run by friends and I the RSPB staffer who had came along to help (a fantastic bloke and just a part of the wonderful support we received from the organisation) told me that it liked to be “invited in” by such local communities rather than approach them directly. Well meant, but I was appalled at this. I grew up in such an area and know that more ignorance and apathy towards nature by adults meant less chance children would have their eyes opened to it therefore the greater need for conservation organisations to compensate by being proactive. The RSPB’s strategy is exactly opposite what it should be in waiting for an invite that will probably never come while the children’s interests gets appropriated by vandalism and anti social behaviour instead thanks to the wrong type of ‘peers’. Vicious cycles of ignorance and apathy won’t be broken by hand wringing over misplaced concerns about supposedly ‘imposing’ yourself on communities when you’re actually just doing your job.
I know these are unlikely to be directly relevant to the RSPB’s current problems, but it doesn’t help if you’re not broadening your appeal and relevance to more people and thereby boosting membership. donations, grants and sponsorship opportunities. I’m not sure twee ness helps either ‘Nature’s Home’ and ‘Vote for Bob’ among others make me cringe to the point of reaching for the puke bucket. There is a point where the saccharin and hyper inoffensiveness are counter productive.
Re the latter imagine if the RSPB went full tilt spreading the word about how eco-restoration in our more upland areas wouldn’t just help wildlife, but also dramatically reduce the flooding of homes, businesses and the better quality farmland (i.e that which actually produces decent amounts of food) lower down? Reigning themselves in to keep in with vocal, vested interests to the point where others are excluded from what they need and are entitled to know is hardly democratic and isn’t going to get you real friends in the long run. I really hope it gets itself out of a hole it’s bad enough the John Muir Trust has hit big problems too – https://www.scotsman.com/hays-way/scottish-land-charity-report-john-muir-trust-conservation-4782814