Cromarty Firth Ward Forum
Action Note of Meeting 23rd June 2011

Attending

Cllr Mike Finlayson
Cllr Martin Rattray
Cllr Carolyn Wilson (Chair)
Stewart Campbell, Alness Community Council
John Edmondson, Ardross Community Council
Roland Mardon, Ardross Community Council
Val Pugh, Invergordon Community Council
Alpin MacDonald, Kiltearn Community Council
Fiona Dendy, Kiltearn Community Council
Helen Williamson, Saltburn & Westwood Community Council
Jon King, Integration Team, Highland Council/NHS
Lorraine Mann, Integration Team, Highland Council/NHS
Tim Stott, Planning & Development service, Highland Council
Inspector David Greenless, Northern Constabulary
Helen Ross, Ward Manager (Cromarty Firth Ward)

6 members of the Public

Apologies:
Cllr Maxine Smith
Fiona Porter (Kiltearn Community Council)
Norma Young, (Saltburn & Westwood Community Council)

Item
1. Cllr Wilson opened the meeting and welcomed everybody.

2. Ward Update and matter arising –
Ward Update – Helen Ross noted she will become the joint Ward Manager for Wards 7 & 8 from the beginning of July. An early task will be to meet some of the key groups and their representatives in Ward 8. There will need to be some adjustments to what work is undertaken. This will be discussed when Members from both Wards will be meeting with Helen Ross and the new Corporate Manager, William Gilfillan, during the next week to talk about local issues and to discuss the priorities etc.

Matters Arising –
• Speeding motorcyclist through Saltburn – 1 cyclist had been stopped and thought to be the offending motorist and warned. Helen Williamson noted that the problem did stop for a while but has just stared again. Insp Greenlees confirmed the police would target this issue again.
• Police officers have spoken to Farm Foods as agreed re the issue of delivery lorries holding up traffic & in particular blocking the disabled bay in Invergordon High Street – Manager will speak to drivers re this to minimise the problems.
• Police are monitoring parking at co-op area in Evanton as agreed.

3. Community Safety Update - Inspector Greenlees gave an update on policing issues in the area. He noted that the detection rate remains similar to last year, but that the incidence of crime being reported, especially serious crime is reduced. A number of tools being used by the police are contributing to this decreasing level of crime, including:
• Deployment of the community response team
• increasing use of CCTV vehicles and public space CCTV
• Extension of the pub watch scheme
• Monitoring of those persons on bail / curfew.

In the course of his report Inspector Greenlees noted that:
• The Dingwall and Invergordon CCTV systems are now upgraded.
• Drunk driving campaign - 3 drunk drivers were detected during a recent campaign. There were well over 100 negatives results.
• Some of the main issues at present are around antisocial behaviour and opportunistic thefts.

The following issues/questions were also raised:
Q. Can anything be done to stop people leaving their wheelie bin in the bike stands in Invergordon High Street?
A. Agreed to pass the issue on to TECs for checking and contact with businesses/householders as appropriate
Q. A motorbike has been reported regularly speeding on the Balnacraggan straight, at very excessive speeds.
A. Inspector Greenlees confirmed he would ensure this was followed up.
Q. Do containers have to be mechanically fixed or is it legal for them to use ratchet straps? Also, concern was raised re the occurrence of insecure bale loads in the area
A. Inspector Greenlees agreed to check exact position and also to highlight the issue to the Department of Transport.
Inspector Greenlees left the meeting after this item

4. Inner Moray Firth Local Development Plan – Tim Stott attended for this item. Tim gave some background to the plan, noting it will be a key document which is referred to when making planning decisions, which will include detailed information for the area. Mr Stott noted that all Community Councils had been issued with a ‘call for sites’ and a number of Community Councils had responded along with land owners, developers, individuals etc. At present all ideas are being captured and the deadline for views to be fed in has been extended to the end of June. About 450 responses have been received so far, and those within the Ward were displayed on a map for the Forum's information. It does not mean all will be adopted, but all will be considered.

Mr Stott outlined the full consultation process which has a number of stages and will take approximately 2 years to be fully completed.

During the process there will be several opportunities for public comment, and community councils will be consulted at each stage of the process. Detailed maps will be produced for Alness, Evanton and Invergordon - but not for the smaller settlements such as Ardross. However all responses will be considered and given a formal opinion.

There was some discussion around the map. During this it was noted that:
• There is an aim to address commuter pressure
• What is in the existing local plan will roll forward unless it is not suitable for development. If sites on current local plan are to be taken out the owner will be contacted to discuss why.
• It was noted that whilst the call for sites had asked for responses on sites for 10 or more houses, responses for smaller sites had been received and were included on the map for information but would not appear within the Plan itself unless they are within one of the main towns or villages.
• Agencies such as SEPA and SNH had been asked for their views too.
• During the consultation process there will be meetings in Alness, Evanton and Invergordon where large scale maps showing all the proposals will be on show. These maps will show housing options, business options, industrial options and also sites which are proposed for safeguarding
• A concern was raised around the fact the river mouth was in the pink designated area at Highland Deephaven – Mr Stott noted this concern and emphasised that this was only the ideas stage of the Plan and there would be several opportunities to react to whatever proposals appear at options stage and thereafter.

Mr Stott left the meeting after this item

5. Planning for Integration of care, health and education in Children’s and Adults’ Services. Jon King and Lorraine Mann attended for this item.
Jon King explained that presentations about the planned integration of care, health and education services for adults and for children were being made to all Ward Forums. The aim is to provide information and to enable people to give their views and help shape and influence how services work in future. Mr King explained that that Highland Council and NHS Highland are developing plans for the better integration of services for children and adults. This involves the delivery of social care, health care that is provided in the community, and some aspects of educational support – for example, specialist additional support for learning services.

The Vision – Statement of Intent
“The Highland Partnership is committed to achieving the best possible outcomes for our population and service users. We believe that services should be person centred and enabling, should anticipate and prevent need as well as react to it, should be evidence based and acknowledge risk. We will improve the quality and reduce the cost of services through the creation of new, simpler, organisational arrangements that are designed to maximise outcomes and through the streamlining of service delivery to ensure it is faster, more efficient and more effective.”

The plan is to use what is called a Lead Agency Model’ to deliver services. In this model adult care services will all be delivered through NHS Highland as the lead agency while children’s services will be delivered through the Council, (with a few specific exceptions such as specialist children’s services in Raigmore).
This change will not affect statutory responsibility or accountability. However the intention of integration is to run services for adults and services for children in a way which no longer has decisisons being made, budgets being held etc. in 2 different ways which can casue delays in decisison making and service delivery for users. Each organisation will be held responsible for the delivery of the relevant integrated service. The two organisations will agree what resources they will each contribute to the partnership and these resources will be combined into pooled budgets for children and adults.

At present the intial thinking is to build local geographies as the unit for partnerships and management, and to hold the budgets at that level – for children’s services this geogrpahy is likely to be based around the Associated Schools Group with consideration of those within Ross and Cromarty being designated as the management area. Partnerships at this area level would involve and have input from users, carers, local groups, staff, managers, councillors and NHS Board and also the commercial sector as they are also involved in delivery.

Mr King emphasied there would be probably another 8 – 9 months of the design stage, working on getting the right management structure, governance, budgets in place etc. It was also important to note that when the changes were introduced that did not mean there would be a sudden change visible at the front line – it would be a gradual culture change over the coming months.

The presentation was followed by discusion:
Q. What happens to a young person when they become 18 and how does it work if a family needs services for both a younger person and an older person?
A. Transition can cause issues at present. Challenges will remain and even if all services were delivered by one agency issues could still arise from national legislation, eg benefit changes triggered by age. It is critical not to put barriers in the way of addressing transition issues – this is true regardless of structure. The changes proposed however will give an opportunity to look at how transition is managed and how children and adult services fit together. It is an absolute principle within ‘For Highland’s Children 3’ that transition should be managed around the needs of the child at an age and stage appropriate to them.
Comment – at present it can be difficult to work out who to contact about particular issues.
Q. Will there be a distinction between younger and older adults or will it be seamless?
A. At one stage services for younger adults were split from the management of services for older adults. The reasoning behind this was that with an increasing number of older adults it was important to ensure that an appropriate focus and budget was retained to meet the needs of younger adults – otherwise the larger number of older adults could overshadow the other needs etc. However this approach created a big challenge in terms of how to deliver services to a small number of younger adults with needs across a very large geography. The aim now is to put other measures in place to make it work better.
Comment – a member of the public noted that they work at Invergordon hospital and there are already positive changes – for example a patient just discharged this week was able to go home quickly because hosptial staff provided the last element of the care plan rather than wait and delay discharge til everything was in place.

4. Ward Discretionary Budget – a spreadsheet showing spend to date had been circulated for information.

Discretionary Budget

5. Date Location and topic for next Ward Forum - it was agreed that a joint Ward Forum with Ward 8 (Tain & Easter Ross) should be proposed, potential topics for this were suggested. These included:
• Tourism
• Education and the School Estates Review
• The Arms Length Organisation

6. AOB
Consultations
HC consultations current running are:
• The Council’s Onshore Wind Energy Draft Supplementary Guidance which gives the public the opportunity to input into the development of planning guidance. This closes 24.06.11.
• The Highland Council and Northern Constabulary Antisocial Behaviour Strategy 2011 – 2016, which runs until 25th July.
• Draft supplementary guidance on physical constraints to development across Highland which it intends to adopt as supplementary guidance to the forthcoming Highland wide Local Development Plan. Comments on the draft document are being sought until 15 July.

More information about both these consultations is available on the HC website