Council ‘hijack’ action group
A former Kinross-shire councillor accused local authority officials of taking over an action group set up to tackle inequalities.
Dave Cuthbert believes officials have “hijacked” the Kinrossshire, Almond and Earn Action Partnership and could end up wasting tens of thousands of pounds without actually tackling the inequalities he reckons have been identified in the area.
In a letter due to be published in the next edition of the Kinross Community Council Newsletter the Mr Cuthbert says it was originally intended the group would be chaired by a community representative, its meetings would be held in public and it would carry out public consultations to identify “key priorities for action”.
Instead, he says, it is being chaired by an officer, no elections for community representatives have been held, its meetings have all been held in private and no consultations have been held.
“The purpose of the action partnership is in the name and it is there for action, ” he said.
“It is my view that the action partnership has been hijacked by officers and is failing to fulfil the obligations of the Community Empowerment Act 2015.
“What are they going to do with the £87,000 I understand they have to spend by April 2018? Will it just be frittered away on a participatory budgeting event?
“When I was a councillor I was regularly approached about the need for a community hub in Kinross. I am a great supporter of
Dave Cuthbert this idea and will pursue it if the action partnership doesn’t try to address it.”
A council spokesperson responded: “Currently the partnership is chaired by a senior council officer but it is still the aspiration for all the action partnerships to be chaired by a community representative and that there will be an open process for community representatives to be nominated on to the partnership.
“This is taking longer than originally anticipated to put in place.
“However, all five action partnerships have achieved a great deal in a relatively short space of time, such as distributing £103,000 to 96 community projects across Perth and Kinross, through participatory budgeting, with 6800 votes cast for local projects by members of the public.
“They have also developed local action plans which identify local inequality issues and the initial actions to be taken to address these.”