High tide Nairn 5th December 2013

Considerable debris was deposited on the riverside walks close to the harbour area earlier today. More images  from the harbour and riverside area here.  And also over on Bratach's photostream.

Laurie lists town centre retail woes

At the N,B&S area committee meeting on Tuesday the ongoing attempt to get Scottish government cash for a charrette to discuss the future of Nairn town centre was discussesed. During this discussion Cllr Laurie Fraser, who has a business on Nairn High Street himself, gave a depressing picture of the formidable obstacles that face shops in town centre premises in these rapidly changing times.

“It’s all very well having these things and I doubt if we are going to get anywhere with the Scottish Government with this. We need to identify a few of the problems and I’ve just listed a few here. We have got excessive retail space in Scotland,  that needs to be addressed. We’ve got unrealistic landlords who demand far too high rents, they tie people into seven year leases and then they put on the leases “upwardly increasing rental only” and that doesn’t help the situation because if the footfall falls away and the business starts to flounder people are bankrupt and at the end of the day as we in Nairn have actually had to house people who have lost their houses because of this. It is something we should be tackling and we as a council should be taking on because some of our leases actually have “upwardly increasing rentals only” and I sometimes feel this is unfair. 

A lot of the properties we’ve got now in our High Streets just because the shape and size of the buildings they bring in insufficient return to cover basic things like roof repairs, upgrading work even insufficient profits for the owners or the people that are renting the building to cover. There’s loss of footfall that needs to be addressed through more car-parking spaces. We have a rating system that is very inflexible, especially for new businesses that start up and where you lose the footfall or you have difficulties it’s tied to the value of the building and sometimes the building can’t generate an income to cover the rates. We’ve got streets that are not the best ideal, they’re hundred, a few hundred year old streets, where as compared to the shopping malls and supermarkets they are purpose built. It’s very hard to compete against that. We’ve got fast changing shopping trends as well through the internet and its hard for people to keep up, certainly if they’re on long leases or in long-term properties. We’ve got problems with banks and financing, we hear the big argument of the banks not lending money out for businesses to get start-up. There’s no bank managers anymore, so I sometimes wonder how young people are supposed to start. I mentioned parking, compare the supermarkets. Purchase of goods is sometimes very difficult.[…] But it’s very difficult sometimes to buy goods and sell competitively especially up against supermarkets who actually dominate their towns and cities now these supermarkets and unfortunately these out of town retail centres - , whose fault is that?  It’s ours because we actually gave them planning permission to build there. So we need to address a number of these issues in particular before we…as part of our ongoing strategy for dealing with town centres.”

Liz then said: “Thank you Laurie, I think that you’ve raised a lot of good problems that the High Streets and the communities and the towns and the villages face but very few solutions and hopefully by coming forward with a charrette we can try and encompass all that. I think if you have got proposals for solutions to some of these issues that you have raised we would be delighted to hear them as well.

The N,B&S area committee meeting can be viewed in a webcast here. 

Laurie on the bypass "I have serious concerns about the loss of farmland "

The N,B&S (Nairn, Badenoch and Strathsepy) area committee discussed the proposed dualling of the A9 and A96 on Tuesday morning down in Kinguissie

Liz said: “This is an item I asked to come on so we could highlight the consultation of the routes and the dualling of the A9 an A96 and I would like to include a further recommendation and that would be that Nairn and Badenoch and Strathspey area committee agrees to respond to Transport Scotland’s consultation, welcoming the consultation and support the substantial infrastructure improvements to be delivered by dualling both the A9 and the A96 and that we hope for quick delivery of the project in our area.”

Her colleagues agreed with that and then she asked for any other comments. Cllr Lobban had some concerns about how close the cycle track would be to the dualled A9 and also about a 2+1 section reverting to single carriageway when a part of the road would be dualled..

Liz said: “If you could send me these concerns we could include them in the representation we’ve just decided to make and I would be happy to hear from any members that wanted to put issues into our representation to this.”

Laurie then spoke: “Can I ask how we are going through this representation because I have serious concerns about the loss of farmland in Nairn because it’s going so wide from the town, or one of the proposals is so wide and I think we need a show a wee bit of leadership here for the communities and certainly those farms that are affected by this. Have we got certain times, dates or meetings?”

“Thank you Councillor Fraser,” continued Liz. “I was proposing that we did not favour any of the routes that go round the bypass for Nairn, that we just welcome the infrastructure improvement and the reason for that is that this council has always been supportive of a bypass for Nairn and I think that some of the options; I think it is up to the communities and the people that it impacts directly on to make that representations. It’s up until the end of January they have to come forward with their concerns. I do think, I would be happy to hear from members, issues like Councillor Lobban raised but I think we need to make a very positive response to the infrastructure improvements that are coming to our area.”   See it all on video here.

Nairn Common Good report slammed as “appalling” by Councillor

It was the second meeting of the Nairn Badenoch and StrathSpey area committee today and it took place in Kinguissie this morning. There were a few Nairn items on the agenda including a Nairn Common Good report. Before the debate on this item got underway Liz said:  

"I’d just like to highlight that this is a monitoring statement that’s set out at the end of October, there are timing differences between the costs incurred and the income collected and there’s rent still due to come in. There should be a surplus at the end of the financial year.”

It was not a Nairn Councillor that was the first to comment but a Badenoch and Strathspey member, Bill Lobban that was the first to comment and he was forthright in his criticism:

”Bearing in mind that I recently found out that I’m actually, I suppose, involved in the Nairn Common Good Fund. I found this report, to be honest, appalling. If the figures that are meant to be there are not there that actually makes it worse because if you look the figures on the page at the moment, it you take out the odds and ends like the income from the Nairn games that’s not necessarily applicable every year. There’s a potential loss of eighteen and a half thousand pounds. That’s a 64% loss on your annual income. Over a 10 year period that would be a hundred and eighty thousand pounds loss on your annual income. So really, could we have this as report that’s very detailed, right up to date so we can look at not only the figures but what is wrong – because there’s something wrong.”

Liz then said: “It is a snapshot, an interim report and there will be a budget coming.”

One of the officials, William Gilfillan then commented: “Councillor Lobban is right, I wouldn’t want to duck the issue. We are stuck with some of the historical aspects of this particular reporting mechanism as well. And what the chair has said is that a good way forward would be to agree the budget at the start of the year. That is normally how Common Goods would be looked at. And then you would try to monitor that throughout the year to maintain yourself within budget. Some of the historical stuff goes back a long time and I guess goes right back to when the rents were agreed for some of these particular disposables here; where they are quite low and they are stuck with 99yr leases on them. Somebody in the past has done that. So in terms of putting all this together we will agree  the budget at the start of the year. [...] which will be difficult because historically Nairn has not had enough money to pay against expenditure against income – that needs to be looked at. 

After another intervention from the Chair Michael Green spoke:

“I just agree with Cllr Lobban, to a large extent these accounts are not really acceptable, they’re not to an acceptable standard and they are effectively not fit for purpose.”

Michael continues with comment about proposals for further action to be taken and then continued: “Going forward there are certain issues in the Nairn Common Good Fund, not least the fishing levy the rates we have to pay – we receive a peppercorn income but we have to pay currently £9,600 which if you take it and analyse it on the 99 year lease, effectively it is a million pounds plus; the requirement we will need to pay if things continue as they are – could end up trading insolvently.  That needs to be addressed and we are looking at ways to address that." 

Laurie was the next to speak: I just think the report shouldn’t have been brought to this committee in the

state it is in. I think the officials haven’t spent enough time on it really – it wouldn’t take a lot to bring it up to standard. It just shouldn’t have been brought in the state it is in.”

Cllr Lobban then continued: “Chairman, is there any way we can have an independent legal opinion on to any legal wriggle room there  may be on some of these historical leases, because with what my colleagues is saying is these could be a major part of the problem.”

Liz was in agreement but what she was to say next was perhaps indication of the (as yet) weak frontiers of the powers bestowed upon the new area bodies: “The historical leases are a big part of the problem and it would be good to get independent legal advice on that but I don’t know if it something we could agree though as an area committee. I think it is something we need to try and pursue as a ward.”

Colin then made a few brief comments including: “Clearly it is helpful to have external scrutiny from some wise minds here as well.”

Liz then finished with another comment: “I would just like to note the support that Highland Council have given Nairn Common Good through their writing off the cancellation of the 390,000 debt and the refund of the legal expenses which were charged in error.”

Update - the video is now on the Highland Council site. 

"Anarchy" without Traffic Wardens?

Back in October we reported on the Gurn that there was doubt about the future of the traffic warden service as provided by Police Scotland. At the time Liz said in response to a question from a community councillor: “I think, so far we were hoping the police would continue on in that role in the Highlands but I think the pointers are that it is going to be on the local authority to pick up the traffic wardens but I don’t think there’s going to be a budget coming across.”  More in this article here. 

Today the Inverness Courier splashes with the news that Inverness and Nairn could be without traffic wardens for up to two years as that is possibly how long it could take for the Highland Council to go through the legal machinations to take over the service. More on the front page of today's Courier and the editorial picks up on this issue too. 

Saturday's Cross Country races - pictures from Kenny MacLeod

Thanks to Kenny for these images of the X Country held in Nairn on Saturday. See individual images here and here. 
Juniors
 
Seniors

Nairn St Ninian 2 Portgordon 3 - pictures from Donald Matheson.

Individual images here.

NCFC supporters fund auction - only 24 hours left to bid for Celtic top signed by Tommy Gemmell and Jim Craig

More on the County Fans Ground Improvement Fund news pages. 

So here it is - Merry Christmas on the riverside walks but who's got Santa?

Regular riverside walkers Murd and Jock decorated the tree again earlier today. Christmas is here once again  for all the riverside regulars. 

As the Christmas tree duo were getting into the swing of it a squad of ladies off up to Cawdor for an early Christmas lunch briefly joined the proceedings and sang two carols before continuing on their merry way. Well done ladies!

More pictures here on the Gurn flickr pages. 

UPDATE: unfortunately within two hours of the scenes in this picture the wee Santa had disappeared from the tree. Murd has offered an no questions asked amnesty if it is returned, he has also enlisted the help of the massive facebook group "Nairn when you were a bairn" (nearly 2,000 members) in an effort to find Santa. 

Inquiry re shops available in Nairn - can anyone help @beautyatartisan

@GurnNurn anyone know of any shops available to rent in nairn? Suitable size for a salon.
— beauty at artisan (@beautyatartisan) December 1, 2013