Longer hours forCAB
An advice service aimed at people in Callander area has extended its hours of operation following a funds boost.
Stirling District Citizens Advice Bureau currently runs an outreach operation offering a mix of drop-in and rural home visits for residents.
It is supported by the Callander Community Hydro Fund – a hydro scheme used to run the Hydro Project and gift-aided to Callander Community Development Trust, which administers it – and based in Callander Library.
It will extending its opening hours from Wednesday, July 24. Current hours are from 10am until 12.30pm, those will be extended from 10am until 4pm every Wednesday, thanks to the financial support of the Hydro Fund.
Last year the Callander CAB Outreach service provided advice to 512 people, supported people to enable them to claim Universal Credit and provided 32 home visits to those who were housebound.
The drop-in Callander CAB service has also been doing joint crisis intervention advice work with the emerging Crisis Food service in Callander Kirk. Rural Food poverty has emerged as a growth area over the last 12 months with Callander foremost to that growing demand as reported by Start Up Stirling.
Stirling Citizens Advice Bureau manager, Craig Anderson said: “We’re extremely grateful for the continued financial support of the Callander Community Hydro Fund.
This allows CAB to be readily accessible to local people in and around Callander.”
A row of six houses alongside Cornton Vale Prison have been demolished as redevelopment continues on the site there.
The homes were used as staff accommodation following the opening of Scotland’s only allwomen’s prison in 1975.
But in the 1990s, when the prison service stopped offering homes to their staff, the properties were used as ‘independent living’ quarters for prisoners about to be released from their sentence. The homes were situated outside the prison’s secure fencing.
Stirling crime clan matriarch Big Mags Haney was moved into one of the ‘halfway houses’ in 2008, midway through a 12-year sentence for being concerned in the supply of heroin. She was freed a year later.
Stirling Council last year gave planning permission to the Scottish prison service for the reshaping of the 9.5-hectare site off Cornton Road.
Most of the existing buildings on the site are to be knocked down to make way for construction of a new and smaller national facility for up to 80 of the country’s most prolific female offenders. An assessment centre with space for a further 25 women is also planned.
It is expected that the 5.2-metre perimeter fence will be moved back into the site. All the new facilities will be within the fencedoff area.
The new complex will be smaller than the existing prison which six years ago had no fewer than 450 inmates.
Demolition is to be carried out in phases so a fully-functioning establishment can remain in use through the construction period.
Apart from the existing entrance premises plus Ross House and the Peebles and Skye blocks, all the buildings on the site are to be knocked down and that has included what appears to be the perfectly good houses.
Asked why they had to go, a spokesman for the Scottish Prison Service said: “Unfortunately, the way the site is being developed, we cannot build around them.
“Where the houses were situated will provide access into the site and that area will be used as the parking area both for staff and visitors. Had they not been so close to the facility, we would have sold them off but their gardens were right up against the fence.”
He said independent living provision would be provided at other prison facilities in Scotland.
SPS is also planning new community-based custody units across the country aimed at allowing women to be closer to their families and support services.
It follows the decision in 2015 not to proceed with the planned construction of a large women’s prison in Inverclyde.
Around 110 prisoners were transferred from Cornton Vale in Stirling to HMP Polmont, near Falkirk, in August, 2017, and by May last year the number at Cornton Vale had fallen to just 68.
The new units are scheduled to open at the end of next year although construction on the site is not due to finish until 2022.
Unfortunately, the way the site is being developed, we cannot build around them