Week 32

Gritting, short term lets, money, buses, and a Happy Christmas

Gritting

The drivers for the Council, and Transport Scotland who handle the trunk roads like the A96, have been working long and anti-social hours this week struggling to keep the roads safe for us all, not helped by the fact that for some of the time the temperature has been below that where salt is effective (which is about -5°C).

As we discussed at Area Committee back in August they grit according to a three tier plan. First they do primary routes (i.e. A roads), then they do roads designed as secondary routes so this is mainly roads used by service buses, and then they do to the third tier, which is largely all the other residential roads.

Conditions have been so bad that they’ve had to concentrate on the top two tiers and the third tier has hardly been gritted at all, which is why your street probably still hasn’t been gritted. I know ours hasn’t.

People have, on the whole, being very understanding of this although I have had some texts and emails. We have had a problem with one secondary route (Laurie Drive in Nairn) not been gritted. My suspicion is that it’s because it’s new and the drivers weren’t told but I’ve been chasing up on that.

Short term lets

The completion date for the STL licensing scheme has been put back six months from 31st March to the start of October so if you are struggling to get tradespeople in to do the work required to your property then you now have more time.

Money

I fear that Highland Council’s money problems are going to be a recurring theme on this blog in coming months but we did have some good news in the 2023-4 Scottish Budget in that rather than providing the predicted “flat-cash” settlement (i.e. no increase - so a reduction allowing for inflation) the Scottish Government are now increasing the resources available to Local Government next year by over £550 million, so we should get about £25 million more. That still leaves us with a predicted budget shortfall of over £15 million, but it does improve things.

They have also said there will be no freeze or cap on Council Tax. This means that each council will have full flexibility to set the Council Tax rate that is appropriate for their local authority area although as John Swinney MSP said “I encourage councils to consider carefully the cost pressures facing the public when setting future rates”.

Buses

This week the council confirmed that it’s taking various bus services in house in 2023 rather than contracting out to private companies. You can find full details here but the significant one for Nairn is that the ‘Cawdor – Nairn Academy – Cawdor Primary School’ bus is coming in house and that bus also provides the service 20 town bus during the day. This seems like a good time to review that service, as I talked about before I was elected, but I’ll return to this after Christmas.

Happy Christmas

I’m just sending out the last of our Christmas cards so here’s the cover of my favourite one this year for you all. It’s from Epilepsy Scotland, who always provide our cards.

I hope that you have the sort of Christmas you can enjoy and let’s hope that 2023 brings us all some happier times after a difficult last few years.