Scandalous, disgraceful and unaccountable
It’s now been a whole week since this page last mentioned Ayr Station Hotel.
In that seven day interim – the bill for the scaffolding surrounding it increased by £11,666.
Every hour of every day of every week of every month of every year that nothing happens to this crumbling edifice – the cost to South Ayrshire Council rises by £69.
By the time you’ve finished reading this article . . . there’s probably another fiver on meter!
Scandalous? Yes. Disgraceful? Yes. But none of the above is exactly a state secret.
But hey, if you’re looking for scandalous, disgraceful AND a state secret – then I give you a South Ayrshire Council leadership panel meeting that was scheduled for Tuesday past.
On the agenda was an updated briefing on the latest developments surrounding the ill-fated building - and no doubt decisions relating to its future. But that entire section of the meeting was pre-judged to be “private”, “confidential”
“for members only” and “not for publication”.
Apparently, it’s acceptable that SAC shell out £1600 of the public’s money - a day - on scaffolding.
But its unacceptable that the public know a damned thing about how long that’s going to continue – and what our elected members are doing about it! That the issue was scheduled to be discussed behind closed doors is bad enough.
The other scandal here is who took that decision? The chief executive? The head of legal services? The council leader? Or a cabal of all three? Legal chief Catriona Caves can trot out Paragraph 1 of Part
1 of Schedule 7a of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973 until the cows come home.
Yes, there are laws in place to allow justifiable confidentiality at council meetings. The issues here are 1) Is it justifiable? 2) Who invoked them? 3) And why?
To the best of my knowledge, the multiple rail-linked stakeholders, the hotel’s current owner and its proposed new owners have nothing to hide. So why the secrecy? Does South Ayrshire Council have something to hide?
Either way, the smart money is on SAC agreeing to seek a further report on the Station Hotel in August 2022. And that will be conveniently after the May council elections . . . with another whopping £330,000 on that scaffolding bill!
As polling day nears, the Station Hotel issue has become a lot more than the building’s deteriorating bricks and crumbling mortar.
To many people, it’s now become a political barometer – a single, simple measurement of this council’s performance . . . or lack of it.
Sure – rents, rates, roads, education, transport and the NHS will all become political footballs in the electioneering months ahead.
But Ayr Station Hotel isn’t the New elephant in the room – it’s the big, slowly dying elephant in the centre of our county town. Thousands of people pass it every day – and pass personal judgement on who to blame for it.. .Ask them – as I have done - and they’ll tell you that they could forgive SAC’s lots of little wrongdoings . . . if they’d only got this one, big thing right! Pretty soon, there will be children going to secondary school who have never known the hotel to be open.
Even sooner, there will be children going to primary school who have never seen what’s underneath that big, white shroud.
You have to ask if any other local authority in Scotland would have countenanced an embarrassment on this scale . . . for this long? The answer is surely ‘no’. Last week, this column invited local party leaders to tell readers what their plans were for the Station Hotel - if successful in May’s election. The ruling SNP group leader was suddenly struck dumb . . . but what coud he have said anyway?
He could have tried “To continue discussions with developers and owners of the Station Hotel, to investigate the purchase or lease of the premises for potential use as office, retail and student accommodation”.
But given that was the official SNP line - FIVE YEARS AGO - in their election manifesto, he could hardly trot out the same old claptrap!
The Labour group were understandably struck dumb as well.
They can’t pledge anything until they decide whether to shore up the Nats or the Tories after May’s polls.
Conservative leader Martin Dowey did reply – and his words looked remarkably like the SNP’s manifesto of 2017!
However, he went a step further and said “our manifesto will clearly state that within our first year, the Station Hotel saga will be over”.
Bold words. However, I can’t let them pass without reminding the Conservatives that Station Hotel lay empty for years on their watch as well.
And if this page can hold SNP and council leader Peter Henderson’s feet to the fire on pledges - I have to be even handed.
Martin, if the Station Hotel ‘saga’ isn’t ‘over’ in your first year as leader – will your leadership be ‘over’ as well? The word “accountability” has been posted missing at SAC for too long.
The public would love to see it making a comeback.
The word ‘accountability’ has been posted missing at SAC for too long