Week 48
Ward Discretionary Fund, cemeteries, feasibility studies, memorial on the Links, Ward Business Meeting action notes, and Twitter ...
Ward Discretionary Fund
I think I’ve mentioned this here before but as we’re now into a new financial year and the balance in the fund resets a reminder that each ward, including ours, has a ward discretionary fund of £16,000 to which community groups or organisations can apply for grants.
You can find more details here but the key thing to remember is that this is for one off items, not ongoing funding, and with only a limited amount of money to play with smaller applications are more likely to succeed in full.
Cemetery issues
We had an interesting briefing this week about the Nairn cemeteries.
Nairn is unusual because it has a new cemetery ready to come into operation, on Granny Barbours Road, and that’s been there for a fair while now. However the current cemetery on Grantown Road still has approximately six years of capacity and that’s stretching out as it seems that people are choosing other destinations for the remains of loved ones. So, for example, that six year figure is based on 20 burials a year but last year we only had 16.
Officers don’t want to start using the new cemetery until the old one is full as, once they do, the maintenance cost will rise.
In other news the current cemetery fence alongside the river, which has been down for some time now, is finally going to be replaced.
Feasibility studies
We’ve got several of these in prospect at the moment and I’ve been getting questions so this week we got an update:
Reuse, Recycle, Repurpose - this is the proposal to repeat the success of Moray Wastebusters at sites in the Highland Council area, including Nairn’s recycling centre. The internal project board of officers is now in place and the feasibility study is out for contract.
Sandown Lands community growing scheme - you may remember that this came out of the consultation on Sandown and the feasibility study for that is is out for contract.
Harbour Street toilet site - the feasibility study for this is being done internally and is going on now.
Brae pedestrianisation - this has been in prospect for a while now, with the proposal being lead by Nairn BID. Your previous ward councillors agreed in March 2022 to provide some of the money from the Place Based Investment Fund and this study is now going ahead.
McDermott’s Memorial
There is a proposal from a group of ex-employees to build a memorial to McDermott’s yard at Ardersier Port on the Links. This is Common Good land so a statutory consultation will probably be required, also possibly planning permission, but before that we ward members have suggested this go to the Common Good Fund Engagement Group which is in the process of being created so that we can informally get the views of the town on this proposal before too much money is spent.
Ward Business Meeting action notes
In my last blog post I talked about Ward Business Meetings and, as I said, these are closed meetings. There are no formal minutes however an “action note” is produced for each meeting, assuming that there are actions arising (there sometimes aren’t).
We currently have a situation where a resident is requesting these notes each month via an FoI request. They are entitled to do that of course but it does cost the council, and therefore you, to process those requests and it also seems undemocratic to only give them to one person. With that in mind I have now got approval that we will release these action notes to anyone who wants them once they’re confirmed at the next meeting and so you can find the action note for the Ward Business Meeting held on 1st March here.
I won’t be mentioning this every time but I intend to publish all actions notes here as soon as they are approved so if you want to refer to them at any time that’s where you’ll find them.
If you have any queries on items in an action note then don’t hesitate to contact me.
Twitter
After Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter I deleted my personal account in favour of Mastodon but I’ve kept my political Twitter account @PaulOldhamSNP up until now as I do have about 250 followers there. However the only thing I was really posting there was links to each blog post and now Twitter have decided that they hate Substack and is now warning people who try to read my posts that the link may be unsafe and also blocking retweets or replies, something which I’ve posted about here on Twitter.
This is the last straw with Twitter for me and I am no longer posting there from that account. I will be deleting it completely soon.
You’re welcome to follow me on Mastodon however be warned that it is a personal account so I do blether on about a lot of things, much of which is not directly council related.