A MAN who volunteered at the National Trust for over a decade has been blacklisted after he pointed out thousands of spelling mistakes on its website.
Andy Jones sent a file containing thousands of mistakes and spelling errors including “toliets” to the charity’s director-general.
The 71-year-old hoped this would lead to them being corrected but he never heard back.
He sent the email to Hilary McGrady in November 2024, asking if she would “be so kind as to forward this to whomsoever has the authority and resources to address these errors”.
Typos included “toliets”, “permanant”, “take a peak” and wrongly spelled names.
A few months later, he followed up with Hilary, who was awarded a CBE for services to heritage in the New Year Honours.
Furious at having no reply, the pensioner criticised the director-general in a complaint to his local branch.
In a fuming tirade, he called the National Trust website “c***y” and “not fit for purpose”.
A manager responded and said they were disappointed with his language, which wasn’t in line with the charity’s values.
According to The Telegraph, the manger told Andy that he would no longer be considered for volunteer positions following his email.
However a spokesperson told The Sun: “We can say that no-one would be told they were no longer welcome as a volunteer simply for pointing out grammatical errors on a website and this would not lead to relationship breakdown.”
Instead, a volunteer being blacklisted would happen over a “series of incidents”.
Andy told The Telegraph he was suffering from stage-two prostate cancer at the time, and this led to him making comments that weren’t appropriate.
However he called for new “vibrant” leadership at the charity that would bring it “kicking and screaming into the 21st century”.
The pensioner volunteered for the charity for 14 years.
He volunteered at the Woolbeding estate in West Sussex, Hindhead Commons and the Devil’s Punch Bowl in the Surrey Hills.
Over the years, he helped with gardening, burning waste, dealt with membership queries and offered guidance to visitors interested in walking.
A National Trust spokesperson told The Sun: “We are always happy to explain our decisions to individuals when it comes to their conduct and the standards we expect but we can’t do this via a newspaper, regardless of what any individual shares or claims, because we have a legal duty of confidentiality.
“We can say that no-one would be told they were no longer welcome as a volunteer simply for pointing out grammatical errors on a website and this would not lead to relationship breakdown.
“Relationship breakdown tends to occur after a series of incidents”.
Last summer, The Sun reported that the charity was planning to cut around 550 jobs to slash its wage bill after after grappling with increased national insurance contributions.
The conservation charity said rising costs were outstripping growth in visitors and donations.
It told staff it wanted to reduce its pay bill and find savings worth £26 million.
The tax hike was a central tenet of Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ autumn Budget, to raise billions of pounds for the Treasury.
The National Trust said in a statement: “Although demand and support for our work are growing with yearly increases in visitors and donations, increasing costs are outstripping this growth.
“We know how difficult this is for our people and are incredibly grateful for their skill and professionalism.
“We are working hard, with the union Prospect, to make the transition as painless as possible.
“This follows months of other cost-saving measures. We always want to avoid job losses.”
And last year, residents of a village which often appears in Hollywood films blasted the National Trust for letting it fall into disrepair.
Disgruntled locals in Lacock, in the Cotswolds, were left fuming at the state of a number of picturesque properties.
The idyllic village is often used by TV and film crews as a location for blockbuster Hollywood films and UK television series.
More than 90 per cent of the properties there are owned by the National Trust and leased to tenants, with some complaining to The Sun that many houses are currently standing empty because the charity is slow to carry out repair work.
Cantax House, a stunning Queen Anne property in the heart of Lacock was famously used as a hideout by Horace Slughorn in 2009 film Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
But the once-immaculate house has been allowed to fall into disrepair.
A spokesman for the National Trust said: “At Lacock we have invested over £1.2 million in recent years prioritising repairs to lived-in properties to ensure the comfort of tenants.
“We have no overdue repairs on commercial properties and currently six homes vacant.
“Four are having redecoration and light refurbishment and will be let to tenants again very soon.
“The other two need more significant work and we are exploring funding options – we continue to maintain them in the meantime.
“Money from filming in the village is shared between the Trust locally and the Parish Council – although there hasn’t been any filming in the village since 2021.”
