 Prior to the 1961 Act , the areas trustees could invest in were based on the Trustee Act 1925 , which set up a " Statutory Lists " system . The list contained only those investments available at the Post Office , along with land . It did not take into account the deprecation of currency or inflation , meaning that if the trustees invested in stocks and shares they were at risk of losing money simply because of the falling value of the pound sterling . As a result , even though the income from a trust might remain nominally constant , the real value of that income could be much reduced over the lifetime of the trust . This was recognised by lawyers , who had been advising their clients to structure trusts in such a way as to allow their trustees to invest in wider areas than the Statutory Lists . In 1952 the report of the Nathan Committee advocated reform , and the government published a White Paper on " Government Policy on Charitable Trusts in England and Wales " in 1955 , which proposed a reform of the Statutory Lists system . This came about under the Variation of Trusts Act 1958 , which allowed trustees to apply to the courts to widen their investment powers , a process that was expensive and slow . 
