Gib Heritage Trust to elect new chairman

The Gibraltar Heritage Trust will have a new chairman today. The Board of Trustees, with four new members, will meet to elect its new chairperson as Delilah Smith steps down after her two years in office. She called it a day at the Trust’s Annual General Meeting last Thursday having taken the decision not to seek re-election and will step down all together from the board for personal and family reasons.

Mrs Smith has describes her time as chair as “a transitional period where the Trust has gone from being largely ignored and on the fringes of the whole process of development to now being well within the decision making process”.

“This does not mean the Trust can make the decisions but it is consulted and a lot of developers, pre-planning commission, now consult us and we are able to influence and promote for example, the use of shutters and wooden windows so that our streetscape in general is kept, with as much of the old town preserved, where possible.”

But she quickly adds: “this does not mean that we believe things should be pickled or preserved in aspect– no, this community has to move on and evolve. Sometimes you can keep the envelope but you cannot keep the inside, sometimes you have to give buildings new uses for the 21^st century community, and this is a developing and affluent community.”

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