Public meeting needed to get Nevis Centre views across

Viola Stephenson, North Connel.

I am sure I wasn’t the only person who was seething to read of Sheana Fraser’s experience and her resignation from the Nevis Centre in the Lochaber Times of March 16.

I know Sheana to be a community-centred person of integrity and considerable determination and she would have fought better than most on our behalf.

Again, we get the clear impression Invernessbased officials simply do not care.

It is now 20 years since Lochaber Highland councillors robustly supported my report to the Budget Working Group of the council to achieve annual funding of £200,000 to the Nevis Centre.

Because of reluctance from elsewhere in the council, that fight had to be taken up again in 2005. Sometimes you have to be really awkward to stick up for your community.

Since then, however, annual funding has fallen to around £90,000 yet, as Sheana reports, another centre is being planned in Inverness, with a backed business plan being produced in record time.

Last week I also learned the acting chief executive of Highland Council together with their director of infrastructure will be attending a private meeting of the Lochaber Chamber of Commerce in April.

This community needs a public meeting where the acting chief executive of Highland Council and its director of infrastructure can be held accountable.

I encourage the Nevis Centre board to invite those public servants, together with the chief executive officers of Highlife Highland and Highlands and Islands Enterprise, bodies which