SLC LEADER JOHN ROSS U NDER THE SPOTLIGHT
are matters which will be under review. We won’t get round them all in the first couple of weeks but we will take a look at them and see if we can find solutions going forward.”
“The figures are terrible. Our housing allocation policy is under close review. Fifty per cent of the houses go to homeless people.
“We don’t have the number of houses to be able to help in all of these spheres. The last administration spoke about 600 new houses but increased that to 1000.
“We are looking at somewhere around 3000 houses to have our share of what the Scottish Government wants to build over the next few years.
“This would make a huge difference to the overall housing situation and relieve a lot of the problems that we’ve got.”
“One of the first things we had on our list to do is rejoin COSLA. We felt it was an impossible situation to be outwith the sphere of decision-making. We are back in and have a chance to put forward our views on the bigger picture as far as South Lanarkshire is concerned. I welcome the opportunity to speak to the Scottish Government about the way forward on a number of issues.”
“We’re trying to bring more control back to area committees. For example, we would like to see a lot of the more non-strategic planning decisions come back to area committees. We would like to see the area committees take more control of the participatory budgeting.
“We’re hoping structures will be put in place. It’s quite a sizeable amount of money that will be coming to each ward.” have come in very handy to us.”
“It’s very hard. I think there could be more done with town centre building. That’s one of the first things we’re looking at; identifying vacant properties. It’s a combination of using empty houses and properties as well as looking at brownfield sites.”