“It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”

On 2 May 2024, Kew director Richard Deverell gave an all-staff talk, during which a selected Kew trustee, Steve Almond, was invited to give a speech about his role and experiences as a trustee. This was definitely an eye opener to many of those present or watching on-line (keep in mind: regular Kew staff are forbidden from approaching trustees directly).

Imagine a botanist being invited to give a talk to the staff at the head office of one of the world’s major banks in the City of London. Let’s say that the botanist has a minor advisory role there. What kind of impression would it make if the botanist pronounced from his pulpit: “With the greatest respect, your facilities are not world-class. I cannot imagine that top-tier talent fresh from university would be shown around and would still be wanting to work here. To attract such top talent, you should move to a business park, where you would be located near a storage facility of Tesco’s and a big DIY store. This hub would create huge opportunities for collaboration, and the move would also stimulate a rethink about your working practices, which, with the greatest respect, are frankly outdated. And, by the way, your long-term strategy should be determined by advisers like me.”

            What kind of impression would this make? The botanist would, quite rightly, be laughed out of the building.

            Incredibly, trustee Steve Almond, former chairman of the global board of accountancy firm Deloitte, behaved exactly like this fictional botanist. His prepared speech was not too objectionable, even though in it he boldly asserted that Kew’s long-term strategy should be determined by the trustees, which must have been news to the Kew leadership. He also suggested that staff should not hesitate to speak out when they perceived that one of their colleagues was under-performing (that would do wonders for the work atmosphere, it must be said). But he went seriously off the rails when he gave an off-the-cuff answer to the question as to what had been the most difficult issue he had had to deal with as a trustee. Here in italics, is a transcript of Mr Almond’s reply, interspersed with our comments in regular text.

The Manifesto for Change is very challenging. But, of course, a very high profile one has been dealing with the New Herbarium Project, so I can comment on that very uncontroversial subject.

The New Herbarium Project is Richard Deverell’s plan to move the Kew Herbarium to Reading that is massively opposed by staff. We assume that Mr Almond meant to say ‘controversial subject’, unless he was being ironic. 

As I mentioned, the National Heritage Act holds us to that legal responsibility to care for our collections. And I can say, after huge amounts of work by the executive and external bodies, the board is absolutely convinced on the need to move to the new herbarium to preserve the collections, not just for today and tomorrow, but for the long term.

At the same time, the Kew staff who work with the collections are absolutely convinced that the move is not necessary. With some adjustments to the buildings (no-one is suggesting that things can stay exactly as they are), the collection can be maintained safely on site, and there is sufficient room for growth for 90 years. Besides, the Kew Leadership have just announced that the Fungarium, the collection of about a million dried fungi, will be kept in Wing E of the Kew Herbarium building and will not move to the new site in a green field near Reading where the dried plant collection will be accommodated. Apparently, fungi are immune to the fire, flood and pest risks that worry the Kew board so much.

But I also said that we are very focused on strategic execution. And the big picture for me is that if we are going to achieve that ambitious science-led strategy, then we need to offer the very best facilities, again, not just today and tomorrow, we have to be thinking about five years, 10 years, 20 years hence. And Kew is a great brand. It is a bit of a magnet for talent, people who want to come and work at Kew. But, you know, we are in a hugely competitive marketplace for that talent and with the greatest respect, you know, we need to attract the very best scientists, botanists, mycologists, taxonomists, curators, collections managers in the world. Not, again, not just today and tomorrow, but over the next 10, 20 years and beyond. And with the greatest respect, I can’t imagine that any of that top tier of talent would be persuaded to come and work at Kew by walking around the existing Herbarium, or indeed the facilities here in Jodrell. They are not world class.

Excuse us for not believing that a manager of an accountancy firm is capable of making this judgement. What this looks like is that Mr Almond is unwittingly revealing the disparaging opinion of the Kew leadership, who want to get rid of the Herbarium at any cost. This is most likely the kind of talk that was redacted from the Trustees’ minutes (and there were many redactions in those minutes). At least, now we know what the Kew leadership really think of the Herbarium, the Jodrell Laboratory, and their staff. Of course, when people start by saying ‘with the greatest respect’, you know that something disrespectful will follow.

And the big prize, beyond our legal responsibility for looking after the collections, for me the big prize is having a world-class herbarium in a hub in Thames Valley Science Park working alongside the Natural History Museum, the British Museum, Reading University: huge opportunities for collaboration, and it’s also an opportunity to change the way that we work.

This is a complete fantasy. Which new avenues of botanical collaboration are opened by being located alongside zoological collections of the Natural History Museum, an archaeological storage unit of the British Museum, a film studio, and some random facilities of Reading University? The Kew Herbarium and its botanists will be moved further away from the NHM herbarium, from the BM and from numerous other important collaborating institutions in London (e.g., London-based universities and the Linnean Society). There will be fewer opportunities for collaboration, not more.

And in my experience, not just in Deloitte, but in working with clients, any big change, in particular one that changes buildings and locations, creates anxieties and concerns, inevitably, because it is a stressful thing, and it has unknowns. But it is also an opportunity to rethink the way that we work. So, a lot of the early work in the herbarium project will not be about bricks and mortars and lifts and shafts. It will be: How do we work? How can we work to best effect? So, a lot of the consultations at the moment are talking to people about ways of working. And it was the same in Deloitte and the same with my clients. It’s an opportunity to really upgrade our performance levels. Because much of... Inevitably, the ways we work are defined and often constrained by the environment and the facilities in which we have to operate.

If a change in the way we work were needed, why would that entail building a new facility in a remote site instead of upgrading something that has been shown to work superbly? It is already considered a problem that the Herbarium and the Jodrell laboratory are 300 metres away from each other. The solution is evidently not to create an even greater distance between them. This doesn’t make sense. And let’s not even start about creating a huge distance between the Herbarium and its botanists and the living plant collections and their horticulturalists.

So, you know, this is a huge opportunity to create a fantastic hub in Thames Valley Science Park. And in due course that creates the opportunity for the Science Quarter, and that’s the, for me personally, that’s the big long-term prize, is to have a Science Quarter here at Kew which is world class.

This is their vision: Let’s dump the Herbarium in a business park so that we can do something nice with the space that is vacated. Let’s put the laboratories inside, use the historic, listed herbarium buildings for public education or whatever, perhaps add a nice rustic cafe, and let’s keep the fungarium there too, because we do not really believe that there are serious risks to the collection. Let’s call the whole thing the Science Quarter. Planning permission, which we always said would not be possible for upgrading the Herbarium buildings, is suddenly no longer a problem.

And so that when world-class people are coming out of universities with their relevant degrees looking for where they want to go, they might be attracted by—still attracted by—the Kew brand, I’m sure there will be. But they will also be attracted by the world-class facilities and the world-class ways of working, and the world-class outcomes, that Kew is able to provide. So, that’s a very long answer to the question, but there you are.”

The implication is that neither the current RBG, Kew science facilities nor the current staff are world class. Isn’t that a nice message to get from one of your trustees? Fortunately, we know that our peers throughout the world think otherwise.

If you live in the UK, please consider raising this issue with your MP.

Here is how to do this in 3 steps:

1. Go to https://www.writetothem.com/ , enter your postcode and click on the displayed MP name.

2. In your own words, keeping it short and clear, tell your MP how the planned move of Kew Herbarium would affect you & ask your MP to raise this with the DEFRA minister.

3. Fill in your email, address and name and click on SEND.

Please, help us getting to 20,000 names by signing and sharing the link to this petition https://chng.it/vsDT2xmKXN to avoid catastrophe and Keep the Kew Herbarium at Kew!

For further updates also follow us on Twitter (X), Facebook or Instagram @KewKeepers. 

Please help us stop this crazy plan

Curator Botanist savekewherbarium@gmail.com