Culture spend plan postponed

Council leader Ian Campbell seemed to surprise some of his colleagues at its last meeting this year by postponing a decision to spend £725,000 on its much-hyped cultural transformation programme.

The Highland councillor said he was deferring a paper recommending members approve allocating the sum from the council’s reserves to cover more than half the cost of its“delivery plan” for the project because of certain“variables”he said needed to be considered before a decision was made.

The paper presented to councillors had declared the delivery of the £30m capital programme, including the proposed renovation of both Perth City Hall and Perth Museum and Art Gallery, was“on track”.

It stated among other things designs for both of the above were“under development”and that an application for“just under £5m for City Hall”had been submitted to the Heritage Lottery Fund.

However introducing the paper last week Cllr Campbell said it was already out of date as the Scottish Government had announced its draft budget for 2018/19 which he said contained certain“unexpected” provisions - in the time it took officials to bring the paper before elected members.

Moving to defer the document and have a revised version brought back to full council in the new year taking this into account he also termed the EU’s recent ruling Scottish cities can no longer take part in European Capital of Culture contests as another“variable” officials needed to consider.

SNP councillor Dave Doogan seemed puzzled by Cllr Campbell’s decision to present the paper to members only to defer any consideration of any of its detail until another time, actually asking Provost Dennis Melloy if this was what had just happened.

The Perth City North councillor was then denied the opportunity to propose an amendment to the motion as Provost Melloy said he was “ruling”the paper be deferred.