Year 2, Week 19
Capital Programme, A939 closed, Montgomerie Drive estate, Local Place Plan ...
Capital Programme
I wrote last week about the council’s Capital Programme so I won’t repeat that here but we did agree it on Thursday after a very long day of full council. This one item took 3.5 hours, we didn’t finish until 8pm and by that time we were only on item 12 of 23 (and we’d skipped item 6 which was scheduled to take an hour on its own). So we will be re-convening for an extra full council meeting on Tuesday, 3rd October to complete the agenda.
As I said the debate was long and many councillors spoke, at least one of whom was in tears over the cuts to the schools building programme in her ward. To give you a flavour of the debate take a look at this speech by my colleague Lyndsey Johnston where she summed up the situation nicely, especially in relation to Charleston Academy, which is losing funding. You can watch some other speeches on the motion, and also on a motion on Academy Street in Inverness, which took another two hours, here.
At the end we voted with the choices being a motion to go ahead with the programme laid out in the papers, which included funding Nairn Academy, or an amendment by the Lib Dem/Tory opposition to reject it and stick with the programme agreed in March. The problem with the latter for Nairnshire is that it would mean we still couldn’t move ahead to the next phase with the academy in this financial year but thankfully the motion passed by 35 to 28 with 4 abstentions so the revised programme was agreed.
A939 closed at Dava
The A939 Grantown road is currently closed after a bridge strike on the bridge over Dorback Burn at Dava near the junction with the A940 from Forres which has resulted in serious damage to the stone parapet.
Someone who visited it yesterday actually managed to capture on video the moment when the parapet actually collapsed into the burn below and posted it on Facebook.
The road is likely to remain closed all weekend and now, after the collapse, possibly rather longer. I will post any updates I get during the week on my Mastodon and Facebook accounts.
Montgomerie Drive estate
I was asked this week if the roads on this estate, which was built by a variety of builders including Barrett and Springfield, had finally been formally adopted by Highland Council, which was one of the first things I chased when I became a councillor back in May 2022.
I checked and they have. They were adopted in August 2022, so residents no longer need to worry about ending up having to pay for the update of the road outside their house and any road issues should now be reported to Highland Council via the blue “Report a problem (!)” button on the their web site.
Highway verges remain in private ownership and there are at least three different arrangements in place for the maintenance of those depending on where you live. This is unlikely to change.
Local Place Plan
The Plan community survey is still open for one more week, ending on 22nd September. You should have all received a paper copy by now. Please take this opportunity to have your say on your community's Local Place Plan by responding online or return your paper forms to Nairn Community and Arts Centre, Nairn Library, Tradespark or Cawdor post offices, or Auldearn Primary school reception.