Details sought on Tay Cities Deal cash

Council leader wants‘as much money as possible’

Council leader Murray Lyle has stressed he is seeking to strike a Tay Cities Deal that will see “as much money as possible” coming to Perth and Kinross.

The council leader told a council meeting this week that sums discussed recently were lower than he had hoped for.

It has now been nearly 16 months since council bosses from Perth and Kinross as well as Dundee, Angus and Fife sent a document to both the Scottish and UK governments seeking £826 million to help pay for more than 50 proposed projects across the region including the Cross Tay Link Road.

However, Councillor Lyle admitted some totals that had been discussed recently were lower than £826m when he was pressed on what progress had been made on securing the deal at a meeting this week.

He had been asking a committee to approve the minutes of a meeting of the Tay Cities Region Joint Committee held in December last year when he was asked for an update on the situation.

The minutes of the meeting merely said that David Littlejohn, the head of the Tay Cities Deal, had submitted a report to the committee with “an update on the progress” of the deal since its submission and an “anticipated timescale for its inclusion”.

After being asked to agree that the minutes of that meeting were accurate, Perth City North councillor Dave Doogan asked Mr Lyle at a meeting of the council’s strategic policy and resources committee on Wednesday if he could provide an update on any “recent developments” in securing the deal. Councillor Lyle replied that there had been “several meetings” between the heads of all the councils involved in the deal since December and that he personally had met the Scottish secretary of state David Mundell twice in the last two weeks and Lord Duncan of Springbank twice in the last three weeks to discuss the deal.

He also said that he was hoping to host another meeting with the heads of the other three councils in Perth soon to further review their progress.

He then added that he was seeking to get as much cash as possible out of the deal saying that the last few times a total had been discussed he had heard projections that were “south” of those made previously.

He added: “It is still a huge amount of money and it will be of significant benefit to all the regions involved. But it is important that we try to get as much money as possible.”