The question submitted by Inverness West Cllr Alex Graham asking when the City of Inverness Committee would be able to exercise its powers of scrutiny was provided with a response which totally failed to answer the question. Question and answer are below.

In a follow up question, The Provost stated that the information for the City Committee would be available by 30th June.

[Note that although the Council papers referred to the Convenor, it was actually the Provost of Inverness who replied.]

Questions to the Convener

The following Questions have been received by the Chief Executive in terms of Standing Order 42:–

(i) Mr Alex Graham

“With reference to the motion passed at Inverness City Committee on Monday, 4 February 2008 which stated that:

“The Administration was establishing the type of information and the method by which it could be reported to Wards which could be aggregated on a City wide basis for reporting to the City Committee in accordance with the Committee’s powers. The detail of the process for reporting the information both to Wards and the City Committee would be the subject of a further report to the next appropriate meeting of the City Committee” and noting that two subsequent meetings of the City Committee have been held without further report on this matter, please advise of the current position and when it is expected to provide the information concerned so that Inverness City Committee can discharge its responsibility to scrutinise service delivery in the City of Inverness in terms of Paragraph 2.2 of the Schedule of Powers delegated from the Highland Council.”

The Convener’s response to Alex Graham is circulated.

Mr Graham will be entitled to ask a supplementary question which will be answered by the Convener.

Item 8 - Questions to Convener
Response - to Mr Alex Graham
In response to your question –

The Corporate Manager (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch & Strathspey) is working with a group of Officers from each Council Service to prepare the information that can be reported at Ward level across all 22 Council Wards. Initially, this information was prepared for Ward 7 (Cromarty Firth) as reported by the Corporate Manager to the Inverness City Committee on 4 February 2008. The proposals for Ward reporting were also circulated to all 80 Elected Members via their own Ward Business Meetings.

As information across all 22 Wards was being collected and collated over the past few weeks, some changes have had to be made to the original material. This has resulted in improvements to the original both in the method of capturing the information and in its presentation. For example, taking the first suite of information on ‘Council Facilities’, this has been improved by adding information on staff numbers, unit costs and regulation and inspections to the original Property database held by the Housing and Property Service. This will stop any duplication in reporting of the information and make the system more efficient.

Meanwhile, the business of scrutinising service delivery continues to happen at Ward level, particularly through Ward Business Meetings. Service representatives are regularly invited along to discuss requirements and priorities for the Ward thus enabling Members to scrutinise what is going on in the Ward and to report back to their communities either through the Ward Forum or at Community Council meetings. The work to capture the information for Ward Reporting will be finalised shortly and will be presented to Members following completion.

• The Administration was defeated on two votes relating to the composition of the Political Arrangements Working Group, eventually resulting in a victory for Caithness councillors who wanted one of their number (Cllr Coghill) added to the Group following the removal of (expelled SNP) Cllr David Bremner
• A request received from the Scottish Independence Convention for the Council to consider a motion “to support a referendum on the political future of Scotland” was defeated. After lengthy debate the Council voted to move on to next business.
• By the narrowest of margins (37 votes to 36) it was resolved to keep Discretionary Ward Budgets at the same figure of £59,659 for all wards, a 5% increase on the previous year.
• The Council unanimously agreed to keep Roy Bridge School open, overturning a decision taken in December 2006 to close it. Financial projections used at that time have since been found to be flawed.

The consequences for the Administration remain unclear, but having broken ranks with impunity some Independents will be more likely do so again. The SNP seriously mis-judged the mood of their colleagues.

The Freedom of Ross & Cromarty was awarded to Hamish Menzies conductor of Dingwall Gaelic Choir for almost 35 years.

HRH The Prince Charles was awarded the Freedom of Caithness in recognition of his strong involvement with Caithness and the North Highlands.

In other business, the Council agreed to keep Roy Bridge Primary School open after figures used in the 1996 closure consultation were found to be wrong; £200,000 was put towards the final settlement of the capital costs of the Eden Court Theatre in what was held to be the last such request; and support an extension of the term of office of local councillors in order to de-couple Council and Scottish Parliament elections.

Theme: “Roads and Buses in our Community”

Projectile Hall, Inverness Leisure, Bught Park
Thursday 8 May at 6.30pm
Refreshments will be available from 6.00pm

Chairman Jim Kidd was quoted in the Inverness Courier [1/4/08] as saying: “We want priority given to road traffic rather than water traffic,” that the set times when the bridges are supposed to be closed to boats were too short and that the agreement on opening times was often ignored by British Waterways Scotland.

Muirtown Bridge is closed to canal traffic 8.20am – 9.20am, 1.15pm – 1.45pm and 5pm – 5.30pm.

Tomnahurich Bridge is closed to canal traffic 8.30am – 9.15am, 12.45pm – 1.15pm and 4.50pm – 5.20pm.

“They reserve the right to open the bridge whenever they feel and they do. Everything else has to stop. We want that right removed. It is very inconvenient and there is no rhyme or reason,” he added. “According to the roads department, Telford Street is one of the busiest roads in the north of Scotland.”

COMMENT BY ALEX GRAHAM

The A82 Fort William and A862 Beauly roads both pass over swing bridges, resulting in all road access from Inverness to and from the west being affected when these bridges are opened.

People living in Kinmylies and Scorguie are particularly inconvenienced, as well as those living further out.

The continuing problems at Muirtown and Torvean highlight the need for a permanent crossing of the Caledonian Canal. Hopefully the Scottish Government will agree with the bid from Highland Council for an aqueduct at Torvean which will provide this permanent link.

Apart from the main Inverness recycling centre at Henderson Drive in the Longman, the service will also be provided in Wick, Thurso, Alness, Granish (Aviemore), Nairn, Fort William, Dingwall and Tain.

Plastics will also be collected in the Council’s monthly mixed recycling collections in rural areas.

This means that Highland Council has joined with the majority of other Scottish councils (about two-thirds) who have some form of collections for plastics, though these vary greatly.  Whilst in the main they collect plastic bottles at recycling centres some do collect at the kerb side in at least part of their area. Overall this is a service in its early stages almost everywhere.

A paper detailing options went before the City Committee on 17th March 2008 and a short list of five options has been identified:

• The Castle embankment
• In front of Ness Bank Church
• Cavell Gardens
• UHI Executive Office gardens (old RNI building)
• Old High Church facing Bank Street

Photo impressions of what these could look like are on the web at:

http://www.greeninverness.com/Documents/FHC%20Options.pdf

Forms are available at the Town House reception desk (Castle Street entrance) or you can download a copy of the options form from the web at:

http://www.greeninverness.com/Documents/FHC%20Options%20List.pdf

Forms should be returned to Highland Council, Town House, Inverness, IV1 1JJ after completion. Closing date is the end of April.

Interestingly, at the same time Angela Maclean has been refused permission to come in to the meeting by video conference from her current location of Barcelona, Spain. So she won’t be able to speak in favour of her own motion then. A press release making her displeasure clear has been issued (no 2 below).

Press releases follow:

(more…)

I said I was proud of my colleagues who stood firm against this Administration’s cuts, and who all voted for every single one of 18 amendments to the Administration’s budget last week.

Highlighting that we were 100% against the cuts I calculated that 14 Independent and SNP councillors from Inverness had cast 98% of their votes for the cuts, and that support from even half of the SNP and Independent members of the Council would have made a huge difference with the deep cuts in service delivery being avoided.

We also mentioned the marker down to show our serious concern at the level of Council house rents — the increase of 5.3% cannot be repeated year on year.

The Lib Dems had argued at the budget meeting that the Council could be more efficient and that, if it met the 2% efficiency target set for it by the Scottish Government, these cuts would be unnecessary. No-one in the Council’s Independent/SNP Administration has contradicted this though they only came up with efficiency savings of just 1.6%.

Another Lib Dem councillor (Black Isle rep David Alston) has been featuring strongly in the press and in particular on the deletion of the post of play Development Officer who brought in £100k in extra funding for children last year alone. He said: “To cut this work seems madness. We will continue to campaign to retain the post and to save Age Concern and Princess Royal Carers.”

This is just one example of a wide ranging measure being reduced to a bland item in the already sparse full Council budget papers, in this case a two-liner:

27. Library Service
Review support structure for school and community libraries, including deletion of 4 posts

• Saving in 2008–09: 0.098m
• Full year saving: 0.155m

The Administration was sufficiently stung to respond with an email from the Convenor of Education, which notably failed to address the core issue of school library services being drastically cut, and concluded with a plea for “for your support in ensuring that we deliver on our modernising and efficiency agendas”.

It is fair to say that the real effects of the Administration’s cuts are like an iceberg — seven-eights hidden below the water. The next few weeks will no doubt see many more such come to the surface.