{"id":416769,"date":"2025-09-11T21:21:41","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T21:21:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/416769\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T21:21:41","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T21:21:41","slug":"demand-for-probe-into-edinburgh-castle-dinner-for-hes-exec","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/416769\/","title":{"rendered":"Demand for probe into Edinburgh Castle dinner for HES exec"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n The dinner, which Mr Kerr described as being \u201cvery, very irregular\u201d, is said to have taken place on August 11 \u2013 when the Royal Edinburgh Military<\/a> Tattoo was taking place.\n<\/p>\n

\n The Tory insisted it was a \u201cserious allegation of misconduct\u201d, adding it was \u201cessential\u201d that both HES and the Culture Secretary now \u201cinvestigate it thoroughly\u201d.\n<\/p>\n

\n Read More:<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n

\n Mr Kerr said: \u201cHES receives \u00a374 million of taxpayers\u2019 money. It must be fully accountable for how it operates and its senior executives must be beyond reproach.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n His comments came after he raised reports of a \u201ctoxic\u201d culture at the HES \u2013 the body which is responsible for more than 300 buildings and monuments of national importance across\u00a0Scotland.\n<\/p>\n

\n Mr Kerr noted that the chief executive of the organisation is currently off with long term illness, and added that the chair had left \u201cbefore his time is due\u201d.\n<\/p>\n

\n He pressed Alison Turnbull, the director of external relations and partnerships at HES, over this matter when she appeared before MSPs on Holyrood<\/a>\u2019s Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee.\n<\/p>\n

\n Mr Kerr told her that press reports regarding HES \u201csuggest that there seems to be some form of crisis in the organisation\u201d, with the Conservative adding that \u201ctoxic working\u00a0environments\u00a0have been mentioned\u201d.\n<\/p>\n

\n The MSP went on to raise concerns over \u201cinternal control and the directors\u2019 attitude towards managing the public finance\u201d.\n<\/p>\n

\n He said allegations had been made that HES directors \u201cwalk around like they own the castles\u201d.\n<\/p>\n

\n Mr Kerr said: \u201cIt has been brought to my attention by a number of people that on August 11 one of the directors of HES had a dinner with a companion in the Queen Anne Building, this is in Edinburgh Castle<\/a>.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n Describing the facility there as being a \u201cvery prestigious room\u201d and a \u201cvery expensive room\u201d, the MSP continued: \u201cTwo people, a director and a companion, dined in that space alone, which apparently, this is very very irregular.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n Mr Kerr said he now plans to make a Freedom of Information<\/a> request to \u201cdiscover that the circumstance of this event were in the Queen Anne Building\u201d.\n<\/p>\n

\n He told the committee: \u201cI think I might discover they paid a token amount \u2013 instead of \u00a312,000, did they pay \u00a350? \u00a3100? Or maybe they paid nothing at all?\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n Ms Turnbull told him she was \u201cnot aware of this specific instance around this\u201d.\n<\/p>\n

\n She told the committee: \u201cAll I can do, I can take it back and look into it and respond.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n However, she rejected claims of a \u201ctoxic\u201d culture at HES, saying evidence from staff surveys showed \u201cquite high marks\u201d for areas such as employee experience and pride in the organisation.\n<\/p>\n

\n She accepted it has been a \u201cdifficult time\u201d for the body, saying the Scottish Government<\/a> had interviewed for a new chair\n<\/p>\n

\n Ms Turnbull also made clear: \u201cIn terms of HES and delivering business as usual, we are going ahead with that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The dinner, which Mr Kerr described as being \u201cvery, very irregular\u201d, is said to have taken place on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":416770,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8816],"tags":[748,1102,4884,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-416769","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-edinburgh","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-edinburgh","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-scotland","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115187763626334594","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/416770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}