Trust House restructuring from top

Four senior management roles at Trust House are being cut, chief executive Allan Pollard has confirmed.

Trust House staff were told yesterday of moves to restructure the business "from the top end". While the senior management team of eight would reduce to four, two new positions would be created. The four lost positions are general manager finance, human resources manager, marketing manager and operations manager. New roles will be general manager corporate services and general manager operations and marketing.

Two senior manager positions unaffected by the changes are executive administrator and general manager housing, and the two others, general manager hotels and group executive chef are being moved out of the senior team. Those two staff would now report to the yet-to-be appointed general manager of operations and marketing.

Mr Pollard would not name the staff members affected by the changes but said the newly created general manager corporate services job would be taken up by the previous finance general manager. He said in today's climate the business could not afford to have senior managers specialising in a single area. They had to be able to multitask.

Mr Pollard said Trust House existed for the wellbeing and enhancement of the community through grants and sponsorship and he had realised when taking up the chief executive's job in 2013 that changes needed were not progressing fast enough.

In the last two years Trust House had shut down 10 of its businesses or sub-businesses, four on the one site at Solway.

That had resulted in 100 staff being made redundant across food and beverage, kitchen and bar staff and had been necessary because trust outlets were not delivering enough profit.

Mr Pollard said the hospitality and retail part of Trust Houses's business was a hard road due to multiple factors including competition, compliance costs, smokefree legislation, new drink-driving laws and social change.

Insurance costs had risen by $200,000, audit fees this year would be $120,000 and the trust had expenses its competitors did not incur such as paying trustee fees and election expenses.

Diversifying into social housing had been a huge success and Featherston Gateway had exceeded all expectations.

Total sales from its bottle store, Post Shop, supermarket and cafe were up between 10 and 15 per cent week on week on last year's returns.

Likewise money invested in remodelling the old Horseshoe Tavern and rebranding it as The Farriers had gone well. "It ... is in the black," Mr Pollard said.

Acquisitions in Porirua, including four gaming halls and a tavern, would add millions of dollars to income and allow more grants and sponsorship.