Year 2, Week 42
Council budget, Firhall bridge, town centre toilets ...
Council budget
On Thursday we will, finally, be agreeing the council’s budget for 2024-25. Remember that the context here is that we are looking to reduce our costs by £113M over three years with the majority, £65.6M being in the first financial year.
I have been attending meetings about this for several months now and have succeeded, I think, in ensuring that Nairnshire is not unfairly disadvantaged by the proposals.
There is a very long list of changes being made including some very innovative projects, and if you want to see the full details then you can find the paper here on the council’s web site and page 65 is probably a good place to start.
I’ll mention some points that I think might interest you below, and there’s also a council press release which gives a wider overview but do contact me if you have any questions on specific issues (please include the page number from the paper if possible).
Council tax - as announced by the First Minister in his speech at the SNP conference in the autumn this is not going up and to compensate the council for not raising it then each year from now onwards the Scottish government is giving the council a sum equivalent to council tax being increased by 4.8% this year.
Fees - the council charges fees for all sorts of things, like weddings, licensing, planning applications, and burials. The price of some of these services are set elsewhere, and some, like short term let licensing, have to be cost neutral (i.e. the council can only charge what it costs to provide the service) but fees are increasing across the board and “person-centred” services like bereavement services, school meals and birth registration are rising by inflation, so 4.6%, but other fees are rising by another three percentage points, so 7.6% (see page 117 of the paper for more on this).
Car parking - the minimum charge in all council car parks where a fee is currently charged is rising from £2 to £3. Note that all car parks in our ward are invitation to pay so you can choose if you pay this fee.
Roads - although this not explicitly mentioned in the paper there is a proposal (see 18.1) to increase funding for loan charges of £1M per annum across the three-year period (so totalling £3M per annum by year 3). This would support an increase in capital investment of about £60M through borrowing which a report to a future council meeting will propose be spent on roads and infrastructure (see this press release for more on this).
Campervans and motorhomes - there is a proposal (see page 124 of the paper) to introduce a voluntary passport scheme for these vehicles, which now flood the highland roads every summer. If you believe officers income from this will be significant, rising by £500,000 each year for the first three years. Note that residents would not be expected to pay and I’m assured we will get stickers for our vans to confirm that we live in the Highlands and pay our council tax there.
Redundancies - the budget calls for the loss of up to 130 FTE places however the council has a good track record of avoiding compulsory redundancies, and indeed voluntary ones if possible as they’re expensive, so the hope is that this can be largely managed through people moving jobs both to leave the council and within the council.
Firhall Bridge
I have had numerous emails and phone calls this week about a proposal to put ramps on the bridge over the river at Firhall so let me explain the background and why Highland Council oppose this proposal.
Firhall Bridge was originally built as a pipe bridge and still carries a water pipe. It was improved in 1957 with the assistance of a Department of Health approved loan to create a pedestrian bridge, although frankly not a great one, and is owned by Highland Council (and not the Common Good).
I understand that the Nairn Access Panel, on whom we rely for views from the disabled community on access issues, do not support adding ramps to the bridge not least because that, in itself, would not allow disabled access. Doing that would also involve upgrading the paths on both sides to be wheelchair accessible and they clearly consider other disabled access issues in the town should take priority.
In addition a report commissioned by the council in 2009 said that the bridge itself also needs upgrading for full disabled access so it's not just ramps which would be required.
The proposal which is back in circulation again is for the construction, by the Army, of a wooden ramp on each bank and therein lies a whole host of issues:
A permanent structure like this will need to meet modern accessibility standards for Highland Council to allow it. So it would need a gradient of at most 1:20 which implies a ramp of at least 30m whereas the plan being circulated calls for a ramp of only 18m.
In addition this length of ramp would require to have at least 2 resting points 2m long and 2m wide to meet those same standards.
If we are going to build a ramp then it needs to be sustainable i.e. it needs to be constructed in a way which is robust, vandal proof, and requires minimal maintenance over many years, otherwise it will incur ongoing costs to Highland Council. So construction in wood, although attractive as it's easy to work with, would fail in both these respects.
For all these reasons Highland Council officers remain of the view that this proposal is not something which the council would support being added to its property and I can understand why.
Town centre toilets
Due to ongoing vandalism the council have had to close the Nairn Courthouse Lane toilets in the town centre with immediate effect.
As has occurred at other sites where ongoing vandalism is an ongoing issue they will not be reopening these facilities for at least a fortnight to see if things settle down. Officers cannot carry on repairing them until they are satisfied that the daily threat of vandalism is reduced.
If you want to contact me about this issue then please do read the post I made about toilets last summer first.
Planning applications
No new applications have been logged since I last posted.