Inverness City Forum
Tuesday 1st June 2010 at 7.30pm
Culloden Academy Community Complex, Culloden
Theme – Highland Council Budget Consultation
Present: Councillor Michael Foxley (Leader), Councillor David Alston (Budget Leader), Provost Jimmy Gray (Chairman), Alistair Dodds (Chief Executive), Alan Geddes (Director of Finance), Charles Stephen (Ward Manager)
Councillor Margaret Davidson
Councillor Roy Pedersen
Councillor Bob Wynd
Councillor Roddy Balfour
Councillor Jim Crawford
Other Council Officers in attendance
Stuart Black, Director of P&D; William Gilfillan, Corporate Manager; David Haas, City Manager; Stewart Wardlaw, Ward Manager
73 members of the public
Presentations by:
Cllr David Alston, Budget Leader about national and local financial situation for public services and the local authority. Potentially cuts of about 12% over 3 to 4 years. We need to look at the wellbeing of the Council area as a whole.
Alan Geddes, Director of Finance about the financial situation faced by Highland Council over the next 4 years.
Discussion groups at each of the 16 tables to consider the key budget questions:
- How can we use our community facilities differently?
- How can we run services differently?
- How can individuals and communities take more responsibility for doing things?
- How can we keep our staff and borrowing costs down?
Question Session
Oral questions:
Q1. Why is the percentage cut in the ECS budget smaller than the percentage cut in the roads budget?
A. (DA) Directors have been asked to identify potential savings in their budgets. These are proposals.
Q2. Are Highland Council not just tinkering around the edges? Would it be better to not give budgets to services – they will only spend up to that limit anyway? It would be better to hold a central pot then allocate funding by local committees according to bids.
A. (DA) The public are not likley to think closing schools and reducing services is tinkering around the edges. The Council already scrutinises budget spending at several levels.
(AD) Highland Council has shown itself to be diligent in not spending up to its budget limit which is evidenced by underspends in some of this years budgets e.g. Chief Executive’s Service has an underspend of £1m. Committees scrutinise expenditure. 3 years ago the Best Value audit criticised Highland Council for having too many Committees – we have addressed that by reducing the number of them.
Q3. At what point during the consultation will more detail be issued to the public?
A. (AD) It would be possible to swamp the public with information but that may not be helpful because we want to gain your impressions about savings. More information can be made available to individuls upon request. This process is about focussing on the key issues and listening to suggestions .
(DA) We need to get the balance between getting enough information to the public without overwhelming people.
Q4. Can the Common Good Fund be used to fund libraries in the absence of Local Authority funding?
A. (AD) It would not be appropriate to recommend revenue funding Services utilising Common Good Funds. Common Good Funds are principally there to be used to fund specific projects.
From the floor – Calum Munro, Highland Children’s Forum – It would be disasterous if the Common Good Funds were absorbed into the Council. These should always be for the long-term benefit of specific historical communities.
Written questions:
Q1. Have the Council’s museum collections been catalogued in full and what degree of public access is there to them?
A. All Accessioned items in the collections are fully catalogued. Approximately 15-20% of collections are on public display at any one time, with displays rotated. The remainder of the collections are in storage and access to items in storage can be and is regularly accessed by members of the public.
Q2. Retaining only the Inverness Museum and Art Gallery (IMAG), only the Highland Folk Museum or only support for 19 independent community museums throughout the Highlands is suggested in the document without any detail about these organisations being given. How can an informed decision be made without any supporting detail?
A. A list of the 19 independent museums is published on the Budget Blog website at
www.highland.gov.uk/yourcouncil/news/blog/listoffacilities.htm
Q3. IMAG had a £1 million refurbishment recently and a consultation was undertaken to choose a new site as the current facility was deemed inadequate for the growing city and catchment area. What has happened to these plans?
A. The Council recently instructed that an Outline Business Case be prepared for each uncommitted project in Services’ Capital Plans. A Business Case has been prepared and submitted for the redevelopment of IMAG and will be considered in due course by Members, alongside other Cases.
Q4. The National Galleries of Scotland and other institutions are keen to loan works and yet there continues to be no suitable venue to exhibit major exhibitions.
A. Our relationship with the National institutions is ongoing and continuing and has and will continue to result in loans from them being displayed in Highland galleries. For example, the Council last year participated in the Artists Rooms project, developed by The Tate and National Museums of Scotland, resulting in the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition at IMAG. That continuing relationship will this year bring another Artists Rooms exhibition (Edward Ruscha) to IMAG and we hope also Fort William and Caithness Galleries. Discussions are already underway about the 2100 Artists Rooms exhibition.
We are also working with the National Portrait Gallery to establish a three year rolling “10 of the Best” project, which would see a series of loans from their collections exhibited in IMAG’s small Gallery in a changing programme over a 3 year period.
Q5. Are there plans to consolidate the Highland Council collection with National collections in a new facility and if not why not?
A. In part response, though, should a new IMAG project emerge as a priority as a result of the Business Case being considered, this would be the expected intention.
Q6. Is there a long term strategy for development of the link between culture, tourism and the Highland economy?
A. Highland’s Single Outcome Agreement and the Council’s programme “Strengthening the Highlands” do recognise the importance of these elements. HIE leads on economic strategy and we could refer to our partnership working with them and that we will be discussing the impact of budget savings ideas with HIE in early June. We expect all public sector bodies to share their budget savings ideas as they are all expected to have budget savings to make.
Q7. ECS 27 Out of Eden drama provision including the Highland wide Higher drama course. Has consideration been given to the long term impact of withdrawal of this programme?
A. It is recognised that this cut would have a significant impact on access to drama. The Council is only considering such an option because of the severity of the financial savings required.
Q8. How will students throughout the Highlands access the curriculum and study higher dance and drama if this is withdrawn? Has consideration been given to the benefits within the whole curriculum for involvement with the performing arts as part of the curriculum and Outreach programmes?
A. It is, though, also recognised that access may not always be possible.???
Q9. ESC 30 Review Financial Support for Cultural and Sporting Events and Festivals- "a variety of musical and other festivals" are not identified. Why has a full list of those under threat not been issued?
A. This proposal relates to the Highland Culture Programme, which is a rolling programme with 3 funding rounds each year. It is an open access fund, to which organisations, companies, individuals and community groups are eligible to apply. By its nature, it therefore has and will fund different events and groups each year; it is not therefore possible to specify “a full list of those under threat” together with information about their economic and social impact in the area?
Members of the ECS committee, on the 20th May considered this report which gave details of the impacts of this fund.
Q10. ESC 25 Review provision of Community Centres in Inverness. Which centres are threatened with closure or reduction of funding?
A. With regard to community centres in Inverness, the public is being asked to express its views on whether it would be preferable to close three or four centres, or whether reducing the funding for all of them would be a better option. There has been no decision taken on the detail of which would be closed or the criteria by which a reduction would be applied. The six centres in Inverness are:
James Cameron Centre
Merkinch Community Centre
Cameron Youth Centre
Hilton Community Centre
Raigmore Community Centre
Spectrum Centre
Q11. What type of access to cultural activity and lifelong learning do they provide? What are the current staffing levels in each of the centres and what resources do they currently provide?
A. The resources provided by community centres vary. They include theatre provision; sports/games halls; playgroup facilities; café provision; room hire; youth activity; etc. The cultural provision by community centres varies but many include access to cultural activity within their programmes or hire out their facilities to organisations providing cultural activity. This is similar for lifelong learning where there is a range of provision with some providing a venue for, or directly providing access to formal adult basic education and IT classes to cite examples.
The staffing levels in community centres are as follows:
Cameron Youth Centre; James Cameron Community Centre; Raigmore Community Centre:
Part Time Centre Coordinator
Part Time Clerical Assistant
2 Full Time Stewards
Hilton Community Centre
Full-time Centre Coordinator
Part Time Clerical Assistant
2 Full Time Stewards
Merkinch Community Centre
Part Time Centre Coordinator
Full Time Office Manager
Full Time Steward
Spectrum Centre
Full-time Centre Coordinator (50% paid by Spectrum Centre Board)
Part Time Clerical Assistant
2 Full Time Stewards
Q12. ESC 8 Review delivery of music tuition and region-wide music support. How will this short term saving affect long term cultural development and education in the region?
Will this contribute to reduction of access for a certain demographic of potential students?
A. It has though been stated that the intention would be that concessions would still apply to pupils from families with lower incomes.
Q13 Have the overall scope of these cuts been taken into consideration in relation to the cultural landscape of the area, the health and well being of residents, strengthening of communities and the potential for economic development of the area via creative industries?
A. The Council will be assessing the impact of any proposals arising from the budget consultation in terms of: economic impact, impact on other public service providers (e.g. NHS, Northern Constabulary) and impact on different equalities groups (e.g. gender, age, disability)
Q14. There are key cultural organisations identified in the document but community centres, voluntary organisations and festivals also provide access to cultural activity and lifelong learning. Reference to these is vague and ill defined in the document. Will more information be issued publicly as part of the consultation process?
A. Further review of support for voluntary organisations has been proposed as a possible savings option. No detailed consideration has, however, been given on how this might effect individual organisations, festivals etc.
The Forum ended at 9.30 p.m.