Highland parents who are still out of pocket from school trips cancelled due to Covid-19 will be refunded from council coffers, councillors agreed yesterday.
The councillors came to an informal decision after the meeting to decide the issue was cancelled due to weather outages.
Inverness South councillor Duncan Macpherson was one of only a handful of councillors who were able to log into the online pre-meeting for the Corporate Resources committee.
He said: “Those of us who were able to be there agreed it was the right thing to do and that the decision should be formalised at a later date.”
Council officers have estimated that it will cost around £290,000 to refund the scores of parents have who stumped up for 66 trips which were called off due to the pandemic.
They agreed it would be “appropriate” for the council to take the lead role in trying to refund families, with the money to be taken from the local authority’s hardship fund.
A task force drawn from across the council’s education, finance, legal and insurance departments will work on reducing the cost to the council of stumping up for the refunds by clawing cash back from travel and accommodation providers.
Mark Gunn, outgoing secretary of the Highland Parent Council Partnership, welcomed the decision.
He said: “Given that the council arranged the insurance and they are ultimately dealing with it and taking responsibility, I think it’s right of them to do that, and right of the council to provide what is effectively the insurer of last resort for the parents for school trips organised through the council and through the school.
“I do hope that the council is able to work with the insurers and if they can recover the majority of the money clearly that would be a good thing.
“In the current situation where huge amounts of money are being spend by government and councils to cope with a whole range of issues relating to Covid, I think the relatively small amount that you’re talking about here spread out among parents who can’t afford to lose it.
“No one wants parents to be discouraged from sending their children on trips, and no-one would begrudge it.”
