Highland Council told to be transparent in its allocation of town cash

Highland Council has been ordered to be transparent in the way it publicises funding that is available to community groups.

The Scottish Public Service Ombudsman (SPSO) said the council did not follow its own rules when it came to allocating Scottish Government town centre funding.

A complaint to the watchdog accused the local authority of failing to publicise or ask for invitations before it allocated funds.

In a report published by SPSO today, it said that a person, known as “C” in the report, had complained due to lack of community engagement when it allocated funding from the town centre funding pot.

Highland Council allocation was not transparent

Scottish Government figures show that Highland Council was given an agreed distribution amount of £1.963million in 2021/22, and £1.704million in 2022/23.

In principle it will receive an amount of £1.187million for each of the following years, 2023/24, 2024/25 and 2025/26.

The report stated: “C complained about the council’s decision-making in relation to the allocation of Scottish Government town centre funding.

“In terms of the relevant governance arrangements, local area committees were expected to identify and rank eligible projects for the funding.

“C complained that their local area committee had failed to publicise the scheme, failed to invite applications and failed to discuss the funding in meetings.

“C complained that there was a lack of transparency in the council’s decision-making process.”

In response to the complaint, the council told the SPSO that it was not operating a challenge fund. It’s position at the time was that the grant was allocated to projects in accordance with the governance arrangements agreed by councillors.

Council failed to evidence how it allocated cash

An SPSO spokeswoman said: “We found that the council failed to follow appropriate processes when making decisions regarding the allocation of Scottish Government town centre funding.

“Specifically, we found that the council failed to evidence how they followed the agreed process that area committees become involved in identifying and recommending projects.

“There was no public record as to how the decision to recommend a particular project was reached and there was no evidence as to how this project was assessed as meeting the eligibility criteria.”

The SPSo told the local authority to apologise to “C”,

In future it said: “Decision-making processes are followed, and the rationale for decision-making, including which projects to recommend for funding, is publicly available in the form of meeting agendas and minutes.”

A Highland Council spokeswoman said:  “This case was reported to the council’s Audit and Scrutiny Committee in March.

“The council complied with the SPSO’s recommendations as stated at paragraph 5.3 of the committee report and the SPSO has confirmed that they are satisfied.”

“At the time of the Audit and Scrutiny Committee the SPSO hadn’t published its decision on its website, so the SPSO’s provisional text was included as an appendix to the committee report.”