Gardens

I sincerely hope that everyone reading this is staying safe and keeping well, we miss seeing you all enjoying the gardens, relishing the offerings in the cafe and holding your family events in the house, we also miss being able to deliver our programme of public events for you to enjoy. I would like to take the opportunity to dispel the idea being generated in some quarters that we have closed to save money, we are not currently making any money to save. We have actually closed to save jobs and to ensure that when the time is right we can be back with staff available to open the house and gardens. Furloughing staff enables us to keep them on the payroll and give them at least some income with support from the government, without the Job Retention Scheme, the official name for furlough, we would have to lay the staff of permanently and then have to recruit new staff when the time came to be able to open. This would inevitably delay any reopening. There are some that are currently withdrawing their support to us because they feel we should be open, what they may not realise is that any loss of income at this moment, however small, may mean that we can never open again as we could run out of money completely, and we are very grateful to those that have understood this and made additional one off donations to the Trust. We appreciate that the government has given a message that parks and open spaces should be available and we agree that any open space can only assist with the physical and mental wellbeing of all in this difficult and strangest of times. In the main those open spaces that remain open are managed by local authorities or are Royal Parks that have no lack of staff or funding streams at this time, we however have to pay staff from our own coffers and without sufficient income this is not achievable. As a Service veteran with a 28 year military career, including the involvement in more than one conflict, I have dealt with some unusual situations, including some with life threatening consequences, but what we are facing at the moment far outweighs anything I saw during my service career. We do not like having the gardens closed, we are rightly proud of this beautiful piece of history that you all can enjoy for free all year round. We enjoying sharing these facilities with you all and please be assured that as soon as we can we will be open again. It might be that this opening is initially limited with controlled access and reduced opening hours, but when we can we will do whatever it takes to welcome you all back. Stay Safe and Keep Well and above all Stay at Home if you can.

Malcolm Godfrey

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