Public Trustee

"Public Trustee (see 27.334). - The Office of the Public Trustee, created in Great Britain by the Public Trustee Act 1906, was opened at Clement's Inn, London, on Oct. 11907, under Sir Charles John Stewart, K.B.E. (1918), who organized and controlled the Department during a period of rapid growth until his retirement in 1919. He was succeeded in office by Mr. Oswald Richard Arthur Simpkin, to whom fell the equally difficult task of post-war reorganization. The other principal officers of the Department in 1921 were Mr. Ernest King Allen, Assistant Public Trustee (at Kingsway), and Mr. Thomas Moffat Young, Deputy Public Trustee, at Manchester. The staff in 1921 numbered 874 in London and 86 at Manchester.

The number of trusts and estates accepted for administration by the Public Trustee in the first year (1907-8) was 63, valued at £384,000. In 1913-4 the acceptances were 1,573 cases valued at £13,500,000, and at the end of that period the Office was administering 5,480 cases, representing a value of £43,5 00 ,- 000, and had distributed 450 cases and £5,834,691 of trust funds. Meanwhile the staff had grown in number from 19 to 370, the annual fee income from £502 to £55,283, and the expenses from £3,312 to £49,428. On April I 191 a Northern Branch of the Department was opened at Manchester (Northern Assurance Buildings, Albert Square) under a Deputy Public Trustee, and following on the Report of the Royal Commission on the Civil Service the Public Trustee's staff was made a part of the permanent Civil Service.

The outbreak of the World War found the Department manned almost entirely by officials of military age, and probably no Government Office suffered so much from the transfer of members of its staff to the fighting services. During the greater part of the war period most of its work had to be done by women clerks and by such temporary men as could be recruited under the existing conditions. In Sept. 1914 new and onerous duties were laid upon the Public Trustee by his appointment under the Trading with the Enemy Act and Proclamation as Custodian for England and Wales of enemy property. The Act provided that all sums payable to enemies by way of interest, dividends or share of profits should be paid over to the Custodian; that firms with enemy partners and companies with enemy shareholders should make returns to the Custodian disclosing such enemy interests, and that all persons holding or managing property on account of enemies should give particulars to the Custodian. Under the Patents and Designs Act 1907, the Public Trustee was also appointed to receive royalties in respect of patents avoided or suspended under the Patents, etc., Temporary Rules Act 1914. A separate " Trading with the Enemy " Branch was opened at 2, Clement's Inn on Nov. 30 1914. Further legislation in 1915, 1916 and 1917, and also the Peace Treaty, threw additional duties upon it, and in 1921 it employed a special staff of 327 persons at Kingsway and Cornwall House. The fees collected by the Public Trustee as Custodian from 1914 to 1921 amounted to £412,000.

In 1915 the Public Trustee Office was removed from Clement's Inn to new Government buildings in Kingsway, Sardinia Street, and Lincoln's Inn Fields, but the continued growth of the work and staff made it necessary to invade the adjoining buildings, Queen's House and Victory House.

The progress made during and after the war is indicated by the following table: - Two facts stand out conspicuously from this record. The first is the large business annually brought to the Department by a " voluntary " public and the very large number and value of the estates under the Public Trustee's care. The second is that whereas the Department was apparently self-supporting from 1907 to 1916, after 1916 the fees earned under the Public Trustee Act were insufficient by an increasing margin to cover the cost of the work done under that Act. The explanation in a nutshell is that the scale of fees which was in force until April 1920 was nicely calculated to cover (without a profit) the cost of staffing, housing and working the Department under the conditions which existed before the war, with a non-pensionable staff of young men who were content to look to the future of a rapidly growing office, rather than to the immediate present, for adequate pay. Such a scale of fees was bound to prove too low when the Department had to pay (in part) the salaries of an absent staff as well as those of their temporary substitutes, to make provision for pensions, to meet the charges for larger and more expensive buildings. completely to reorganize its personnel after the war on an entirely new basis of salary values, and finally to conform with the new and much more generous treatment of Civil Servants in the matter of base salaries and " cost-of-living " bonus which followed the institution of Whitley Councils in the public service.

On the retirement of Sir Charles Stewart the Lord Chancellor appointed in April 1919 a strong Committee, with Sir George Murray, G.C.B., as chairman, to review the whole position of the Department and to report upon questions of staffing, pay, policy, decentralization and fees, and it did so in Nov. 1919. With one dissentient the Committee approved the general lines on which the office had hitherto been conducted and recommended as a basic policy that " trust estates should, while retaining the service of outside agencies, secure the further advantages afforded by a Public Department having at its disposal within its own walls independent experts capable of criticizing and possibly correcting or supplementing the advice received through the ordinary channels available to the private trustee." The Committee recommended the modification and strengthening of the internal organization in certain respects, and in order to restore the financial equilibrium,upset by the war, suggested a new scale of fees calculated to increase the income of the Department by about £120,000 a year. With regard to branch offices, the Committee recognized the successful and economical management of the Manchester office and approved the principle of decentralization, but hesitated to recommend further experiments in this direction " until the possible deterrent effect of the increased fees on new business has been ascertained." Mr. S. Garrett in his Minority Report advocated a restricted service and somewhat lower charges, and doubted whether " business would be obtained in the provinces at the fees proposed by the Majority Report." The Majority Report was accepted by the Lord Chancellor, and the new scale of fees became operative on April 1 1920.

The increase of fees was still too recent in 1921 for its effects to be accurately measured, and the calculations upon which it was framed had already been to some extent upset by unforeseen circumstances. It remained to be seen whether Civil Service conditions strictly applied to a Department which, like the postal, telegraph and telephone services, was essentially a business undertaking, but unlike them was not a monopoly, were compatible with commercial success in a field open to competition. The competitors of the Public Trustee are (a) banks, insurance companies and other corporate trustees, and (6) solicitors, who are the active managers of thousands of trusts and estates nominally administered by others. If the Public Trustee's charges were to rise beyond a certain level his services would not be sought, and his competitors, who as employers are entirely untrammelled, would be greatly stimulated and assisted. In 1921 there was as yet no indication that this level had been reached, and those who resorted to the Department had at any rate the. satisf action of knowing that the Public Trustee's fees, if and when they showed a commercial profit, would be reduced.

On the administrative side the Public Trustee Office may be regarded as an established success and an institution of great public utility in protecting beneficiaries against the loss of trust funds through incompetence and dishonesty. Its work has been brought up to a high standard of efficiency, and the system of organization under which every trust is administered by an individual trust officer, who is personally responsible for its proper conduct, disarms the criticism that the functions of a private trustee cannot be performed by a department of the State. Another fear, viz. that the aggregation of a vast body of investments under the control of a single official might be a public danger, has found no justification in experience. Although the Public Trustee is responsible for investments of one kind and another (apart from " enemy " property) of a nominal value exceeding (in 1921) 1 43,- 000,000, they are in fact so multitudinous in character, represented by so many separate earmarked holdings, governed by so many different trust instruments, and in so many cases controlled jointly by co-trustees, that it would be impossible to deal with them en masse. As a further safeguard the Public Trustee, from 1914 onwards, has enjoyed the advantage of the counsel of an Investment Advisory Committee composed of representatives of finance in the City of London; in 1921 it consisted of the Rt. Hon. Frederick Huth Jackson, Mr. R. Martin-Holland, C.B., Sir R. M. Kindersley, G.B.E., and Mr. J. A. Mullens, Junr. This Committee meets monthly to review and discuss with the Public Trustee all investments and sales for reinvestment made by him.

The first country to possess a Public Trustee was New Zealand (1872), and the Public Trustee of New Zealand had in 1921 offices at Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin and Wellington. In Australia there are Public Trustees at Sydney (N.S.W.), Adelaide (S.A.), and Hobart (Tasmania), and Public Curators (with similar functions) at Melbourne (Victoria), and Brisbane (Queensland). In Canada there is a Public Trustee at Toronto. In India and Burma there are Administrators-General and Official Trustees (offices at Allahabad, Bombay, Calcutta, Madras and Rangoon) who have some of the functions of the Public Trustee in England. Ireland has a Public Trustee (at Dublin), who receives only purchase moneys paid under the Irish Land Acts.