Sports tender was about best value
a sports presenter on Radio Scotland, a few weeks ago.
It’s shocking that people are paying a licence fee to promote something which is essentially in the private sector.
Where is the famed impartiality of the BBC?
Yours sincerely, Margaret Campbell, Stirling Regarding the recent reports in the Observer and elsewhere concerning the tender process for Stirling Council sports and leisure facilities, the process was started to obtain best value.
Stirling Council has had a policy not to pursue any major commercial outsourcing/privatisation since the Labour-led council produced its first budget in 2013.
The original vehicle for delivering sport and leisure services was set up by a Labour council as an independent local charitable trust so that the tax advantages and any operating surplus would be used within the trust to benefit local residents’ healthy living activities.
Legal advice was taken on the method of procurement to obtain best value and market test the most effective means of delivering sport, leisure and health programmes. This was done against a backdrop of cuts forced upon all councils by the Scottish Government and in Stirling’s case projected to reach £47 million by 2021.
Some media outlets presumed a privatisation process had been undertaken and prejudged the issue before the council meeting had even considered the outcome of the tender process. On all counts this presumption was false as the tender process was based upon service delivery via a charitable trust.
At the council meeting, the Labour motion to propose a way forward with the delivery of future services was supported by all the political parties because the two bidders were breaching our commitment to best value and moving away from a local, independent, not for profit sport and leisure trust model.
Unfortunately for the SNP in Stirling their political posturing and campaign giving vocal support to one of the bidders was dumped very quickly when they discovered that a partnership had been struck with a London-based limited company whose profits and losses could be distributed across all of their operations throughout the UK.
I trust Stirling Observer readers will make their own minds up about the motives behind the story but the SNP group in Stirling need to explain why they ended up supporting Labour and abandoned the promises they made to their preferred bidder. Was it because the unusual company structures it had planned didn’t fit their political agenda?
Finally, the Labour Party in Stirling will continue to seek best value and better services for the people of Stirling and protect the employment of all current staff delivering services on our behalf regardless of the opportunistic political commentary of SNP-spun alternative facts.
It was a Labour-led Stirling Council that invested £23 million in a sports village with a range of first class sports facilities and also created the existing independent local not-for-profit sport and leisure trust. Labour at Stirling Council reinforced its support for that model with the decision to form a new trust without direct ties to any commercial company structures.
Councillor Corrie McChord, Stirling Labour Group