A member of Scottish Parliament will ask its policy makers for an explanation as to how a charity, which gets 90 per cent of its funding from the government, was able to appoint the wife of the chief executive to a senior role, without the position being externally advertised.
John Wilson (SNP, central Scotland) has accused Keep Scotland Beautiful of nepotism after finding out Catherine Gee was appointed to the new role of head of corporate services in January of this year, having originally joined the charity on a temporary contract in 2011. Her husband, Derek Robertson became chief executive in March 2011 after the previous CEO retired.
Wilson is now calling for the Scottish government to investigate the charity, having been informed about the appointment by the Sunday Herald newspaper.
He has now submitted a question on the subject for today’s afternoon’s session in the Scottish Parliament. If his question is not selected he will write to the Cabinet Secretary, to “seek assurances” that the recruitment processes of publicly funded organisations are what “you would expect to be considered good practice”.
'We follow governing documents fully'
Operations director at Keep Scotland Beautiful, John Frater, defended the charity’s recruitment process, saying that the charity has an established policy of advertising positions internally first and that once Gee had applied for the position, “the chief executive had nothing whatsoever to do with the process” and that himself and a trustee conducted the interview.
He added that the process for handling the situation is set out in the charity’s governing documents and that “we followed these fully” and that “if the MSP wishes to come and speak to us he’s welcome”.
Wilson argued that this was still not “best practice” and that the “chief executive should have been fully engaged in the restructure process”.
According to its latest year-end accounts filed with Companies House, the charity received three grants from the Scottish government which together amounted to £15,385,764. Its total income was £16,670,195, with donations and investment income making up the rest.
Keep Scotland Beautiful is an offshoot of Keep Britain Tidy - it became an independent charity when the Scottish Parliament took up its powers in 1999. Its income has more than tripled since 2008, when it was just over £5m.
The charity administers the Scottish government’s Climate Challenge Fund and recently launched a new campaign to clean up the country with the backing of MSPs including the Environment Secretary Richard Lochhead and Labour shadow environment minister Claudia Beamish.
