Tuesday, October 27, 2015

One of those days when you wonder if Highland Council is beyond repair?

Two news stories breaking today out there on line today concerning Highland Council - cleaners look set to be paid off but there is a massive bill for hire cars. The BBC reports:

"Highland Council expects to begin restructuring its cleaning service from next year to save £580,000.

It said the 12% reduction in the service's budget would mean cutting 30 full-time posts and ending cleaning supervisor roles in some areas.

The union Unison said the cuts would affect low-paid female workers." More here.

Contrast that with a story in the Strathspey Herald: "New figures suggest Highland Council spends around £30,000 a month on hire cars for its workers.

The council spent a total of £363,063 on hired cars, including £120,138 on fuel costs for the last financial year.

The local authority defended the costs – saying the council covered the largest local authority area in Scotland." More here.

Update there is a facebook chat with the Convenor of Highland Council starting this evening 27/10/15 at 17.30. Question is:

"The Council has to save around 6% across all services next year. Would you be willing to pay a bit more council tax to protect some services against cuts eg. education, care, roads, voluntary groups etc"  You can participate here. 

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

HC is most definitely beyond economical repair, and it comes as no surprise that yet again they choose to get rid of those who actually do the work. Before any of the cleaners posts are made redundant they need to start reducing the hierarchy.

Anonymous said...

£30,000 a month is a huge amount of money on hire cars -- they could run their own fleet of ultra efficient , high mpg, zero tax cars leased on a hire contracts for that amount, for a whole year and pay nothing else, saving 11 months * 30,000 pounds!

its an utter disgrace - its time for a massive shake up in how our councils are run at the Top and what they spend their money on - make it a Mayoral system on a 2 year voting cycle.

Anonymous said...

a damn disgrace,i say get them on bikes or walk,start the cuts at the top,
thay have had it too cushy for far too long,
STOP WASTING OUT COUNCIL TAX NOW.
w.mckechnie
Nairn.

Growtosow said...

They could be cutting back on. Our bedding plants as well. Nairnshire this week has a story on it a shame as Nairn used to have nice displays of flowers. And it could all go. They have been filling in some beds over the years. And not putting up the hanging baskets.

Nairnite said...

This is a good example of necessary cuts. Given a choice between keeping bedding plants, street cleaning or road gulley emptying, I'd choose one of the latter.

Highland Council have forked out these costs on vehicles. Well maybe that's the lesser of two evils. Not all journeys are possible by bus - cue debate on public transport. And not all journeys are possible by walking or cycling. And to be quite frank if Eco transport was sustainable, we'd all be driving around in cars fuelled by turnips. Often it's cheaper for an employer to hire a car and pay petrol costs for a long journey, than pay a straight mileage rate of approx £0.45 / mile. Eg a 200 mile journey for an employee paid for example £0.45 /mile costs £90. But a £25 hire car and petrol costs for the same 200mile journey may cost say £45.