Week 14

Meetings, Sandown, gritting, East Nairnshire Community Council, church closures ... and more meetings

Ward Area Committee

Our first Ward Area Committee meeting was held this week where your four councillors received reports and made decisions on issues specific to the Nairn & Cawdor ward. There’s a full recording of meeting available online.

We began by electing Michael Green as chairman, myself as vice-chairman, and Laurie Fraser as provost and then went on to discuss many issues.

Sandown land

The most significant item in the meeting, at least from the press’ point of view, was our decision not to continue pursuing the sale of the land at Sandown on the west edge of Nairn and also to explore options to create some sort of community growing scheme on the Sandown land between the allotments and the A96.

This seems like a sensible outcome to me and should hopefully lay to rest a lot of the concerns people had about this land.

I was interviewed by BBC Scotland about this on Monday afternoon and you may have heard me on the radio on Tuesday morning. Here’s the 45 seconds which made the cut.

Winter gritting

One of the other issues discussed at the meeting was the winter gritting programme and I suggested, and members agreed, some changes in the Lochloy estate area. In the maps below roads marked in blue are the second area gritted after primary routes (i.e. A roads) and the green areas are gritted in the final round. Roads which aren't coloured aren't gritted at all.

This first map shows the previous schedule, which missed a lot of the new parts of the estate and also didn't have the whole of the bus service route (e.g. Laurie Drive) in blue.

This second map shows what we agreed: so the whole of the bus route is now done first and then all of the estate roads, not just the older ones.

Hopefully all of this will improve the gritting for the estate this winter.

East Nairnshire Community Council election

Nominations are being invited from people seeking election to 15 Highland community councils across the Highland Council area including East Nairnshire Community Council. This community council covers a vast area as shown in this map but most of it is sparsely populated so, if you do live in the area, then please consider stepping up.

Community Councils are voluntary organisations that express the views and concerns of local people within their area across a wide range of issues from new buildings and roads to local services and facilities.

The need to hold interim elections has come about due to the resignation of some members, which have brought these councils down to below half of their memberships.  For more information, including how to apply, go here.

Church closures

You may have read in the local press that the Church of Scotland is considering closing around 30 churches across Inverness, Nairn, and Moray including St Ninian’s at the top of Nairn high street and Auldearn Church while a little further away St Laurence Church in Forres, a particular favourite of mine, is also threatened with closure. (Nairn Old Parish Church on the A96 is currently not affected by this proposal.)

I can understand the Church of Scotland’s need to consider closures as congregations continue to decline but churches are often iconic buildings in the community and that’s certainly true of St Ninian’s whose spire can be seen from all over the town. They’re also often listed due to their age and architectural significance, which does help protect them but also makes it harder for the Church when considering what to do with them for the best.

I have been aware of this news for a while and I have already met with St Ninian’s to discuss ways forward for the future.

Strike action

I’ve previously mentioned that there may be strikes by local council employees, especially refuse workers, over pay and Unite have now confirmed that they will be on strike from 24th to 31st August. I will continue to keep you up to date on this as it develops.

A busy week to come

I’ve spent a lot of my time over the last few days wading through 393 pages of reports, 123 pages of plans, plus many messages online objecting and supporting planning applications in preparation for next Thursday’s South Planning Applications Committee (SPAC) and as I’m the vice-chair of SPAC I have a pre-meeting with officers on Monday to plan the meeting.

On Tuesday I’m attending the first board meeting of Highland Opportunity (Investments) Limited of which I am now a director along with a number of other councillors. It’s a not-for-profit and its purpose is to provide accessible business finance and advice to small and medium sized enterprises who are based in the Highlands. I will be talking about this some more in a future post.

On Wednesday I’ve been invited to a Cost of Energy Crisis Round Table in Inverness organised by our MP Drew Hendry. I’m honestly not sure what we can do to help, but I know we can’t just sit on our hands and do nothing.

The first meeting of the council’s Communities and Place Committee also takes place on Wednesday. It’s not a committee I’m on - Cllrs Barbara Jarvie and Laurie Fraser represent the ward on that one - but I will try to attend at least part of it.

On Thursday we’ve got the aforementioned SPAC and we will be considering four major development pre-application consultations and fourteen planning applications, several of which are clearly very controversial. It’s going to be a long meeting I fear.

Then Saturday is the Nairn Highland Games and I plan to be on the SNP stall where we will be running our usual bottle tombola which always goes down well. So do say hello if you wander by.