Residents in a Highland town have been left “dejected” after the council administration sidelined a much-needed sports hall in the pipeline for more than 25 years.
The Dornoch Sports Centre was listed as an approved project in the local authority’s March 2015 capital budget, but looming cuts of nearly 50% have altered spending priorities.
Angry Sutherland Independent councillor Jim McGillivray says a programme of new school builds in Inverness will likely take precedence over the estimated £3 million sports centre scheme, which would have been built at a site behind Dornoch Academy.
But a freedom of information request has revealed the council has already spent just over £284,000 on the project on in-house professional fees, external consultant professional fees, a planning application fee and site investigation works.
Dornoch resident Jerry Bishop said: “It’s a complete nonsense. No private company would waste that much money to get it to the stage of going ahead – and then not do it on a whim. It just reinforces the cynicism of politicians.”
Mr McGillivray said: “The feeling here is one of utter dejection and a bitterness at being deceived at the last minute. My optimism for the project has been severely dampened.
“Sutherland is not getting its fair share of spend and there should be complete dis-aggregation of capital spend to our own areas. It’s a very important project for the area but does not feature in the pan-Highland scale of priorities. There is a fault line in the structure of the way the council conducts its business.”
Mr McGillivray calculates that, with 6% of the Highland population, the region should have received £31.1 million of the capital spend in the last five years, which he says is a long way off reality.
The authority was expected to provide up to £3 million for the Dornoch Sports Centre. But a provisional funding package was agree which included £200,000 from sportscotland, £100,000 from Dornoch Common Good, as well as £200,000 of private investment and £75,000 of Sutherland Leader funding.
The council’s director of Corporate Resources, Derek Yule, said that the council will agree its new capital plan next month and that, given the magnitude of the reduction in spend, officers have not been legally committing further capital expenditure.
He added: “I appreciate the difficulty this causes in respect of Dornoch, but at this stage, the project is not legally committed.”
Mr Yule said the scheme would also require an annual revenue subsidy of about £80,000 at a time when the council is aiming to achieve more than £30 million of revenue savings.
But Mr Bishop and Mr McGillivray both disputed this, as this funding would come from High Life Highland.
