A north community counicl leader has voiced concerns for the future of the organisations in the wake of Highland Council’s decision to cut their income by half in a bid to make essential savings.
David McGrath, chairman of Smithton and Culloden Community Council, said his group is set to lose over £900 and is concerned how they will continue to support themselves.
He said: “The money we get we usually use some for administrative costs and we give some to community groups, like play groups and pensioner groups, or other projects out with Highland Council’s funding.”
Mr McGrath pointed out that the council has recently spoken a lot about communities doing more for themselves.
He added: “It sounds grand but in light of the recent cuts, how can we trust them to continue that funding when we can’t trust them to give us the initial stipend to keep ourselves going? We represent our community because we care about where we live. I don’t see the Highland Council doing something to care about us.”
In a bid to save £15million in last week’s budget-setting, the Highland Council administration made a 53% reduction in community council grants last week as part of their annual budget. They also made reductions in the wards discretionary budget.
Costs to local communities include their general administrative expenditure and Third Party Insurance- which goes towards local events- bringing costs up for some to around £600.
Budget Leader Councillor Alister Mackinnon acknowledged the struggles they face and aims to help minimise the impact. He said: “I acknowledge that there will be difficult decisions. I was previously chairman of Conon Bridge community council but the reality is that our budget have been cut and we have to make difficult decisions and as a budget team we decided to cut the grant by 50 per cent to a discretionary budget and reduce the grant to community councils. I fully accept that there will be difficulties and we will look at different ways of how we can assist the councils.
“The reality is we have not had a council tax increase for eight years and we have all benefited from that but if we had put the council tax up by one per cent per annum over the years we would have had £24 million in the grant by now. We will work with the community councils to on how we can work together and move forward.”
