Cool response for Rosemary's suggestive letter

West Community Council chair Rosemary Young had written to River and Suburban CC calling for a working group or subcommittee to discuss planning matters. Her three page letter which outlines how West CC view certain recent difficulties over planning matters can be seen here.

This initiative received a very cool response from the River members however and this observer detects that perhaps the “cross-border” interventions from West which recently took a different view from River over the Bus Station and Braeval applications. Jimmy Ferguson and Brian Stewart were in the Community Centre last night (Tuesday) to support Rosemary’s letter and reply to any points raised by River members but they had a hard time of it.

River member Andrew Purkis said: “I’m not particularly in favour of this. I do think there is merit in it but we do have organised bodies of community councillors already. Where there are areas where there are developments which affect the town generally, I think those are important for the community councils to get together to discuss those issues.I don’t think it needs to set up another level of bureaucracy. I would trust our chairman, and I’m sure each community council would trust their chairman, if there was an issue which really affected the town as a whole, for those chairman to meet and see if there is any common ground and then come back to discuss and then come back to the committees.”

Jimmy Ferguson said in reply to that and other comments: The issue wasn’t so much about someone wanting to put an extension up in their back garden and that sort of stuff, that’s very local. There are some big issues around the town, like Sandown, like Nairn South, where it’s going to have a massive impact on the whole community. Individuals within each of the community councils have quite strong backgrounds or professional backgrounds and the idea behind this was just to have a get together with a few of those people to discuss what are the bigger issues around the town and try and form a consensus on what the Nairn community really feel about some of those issues.

Leslie Bolton supported Andrew’s point of view: “Why do we need another level, Mr Chairman, I agree with Andrew, we meet monthly, eleven times a year, we have four joint meetings, that’s fifteen meetings in the year and if there was some major issue that Highland Council said they were going to deal with the town centre as a whole, we could always call a special meeting to discuss that. On Nairn South we made our representations, Nairn West made different representations, on Braeval as Stephanie said, we had a view, it was criticised at the West meeting, it was criticised at the Suburban meeting. Now that’s not the way to go. We are entitled to have our opinion on anything that comes within our area. And if we say what we say then that’s it.”

Sheilea Mayer then spoke about the Lodgehill Clinic planning application and how the three Community Councils working in unison succeeding in getting an appropriate result for the residents in that area. At this point this observer spoke of how a sort of procedure has developed in the town where residents of one particular area that are faced with an inappropriate development know that they have to get support from other areas of the town and not only their own local community council. This observer believes that these campaigns when they come are best left to individuals concerned to start things off and go to the Community Councils.

Tommy Hogg perhaps summed up the current thinking of River CC when he said: “The common message just doesn’t work sometimes, what suits one community council area will not sort the other and that has been proved in the past and it’s still the same way.”

Stephanie Whittaker added to this: “I think the town will come together when it is under threat and I think it is quite obvious that everyone will work together, the other thing is there is disagreement. If you ask, I have been spending ages, wondering around town saying to people, “What do you think about the bus station?” “What do you think of the plans.” Wonderful, really great, dreadful, hate it. There is a dichotomy of opinion and there always will be. It may be that it is a difference of opinion between community councils but it may be that the people in the town are thinking different things it’s up to us to listen to what they are saying[…] People are wonderful and they will come together and I don’t think we need to push them too much outside the system that we have already."

Although there was a fairly negative reception towards Rosemary's proposal from River members they did agree to discuss it further and thought it would also be a matter for the joint community council meeting on the 31st of January.

Community Councils to take over NICE?

We reported just before Christmas how NICE is aiming for Development Trust Status to pro-actively take forward town centre issues. Interestingly at the West CC meeting last week Jimmy Ferguson, during discussion on regaining democratic control of the Common Good Fund, asserted that NICE was moving in a direction where they might seek to take ownership of community assets. He went further and indicated that, “the three Community Councils need to take ownership of NICE.”

It does seem a very sensible move to this observer, maybe this is the drift of current thinking within NICE?

Jimmy Ferguson's criticism of Jeanne Tolmie

Part of the contents of an e-mail circulated to NICE members and local Highland Councillors have now found their way into the local mainstream media, that is to say the Nairnshire Telegraph (this week's 16 pager is a belter by the way). At last week's ward forum Jeanne indicated that she was not particularly enamoured with NICE. Now those comments are a bit hard to fathom, especially since she is the chair of a Community Council that is officially supporting NICE. Anyway this is what Jimmy Ferguson (NICE's high heid yin) had to say:

"I was very surprised that Jean Tolmie did not agree with NICE's submission, maybe it was forgotten that the River CC has three active participants in the NICE team who have all made significant and welcome suggestions and afforded a lot of their personal time. It will be very interesting to review Jean's issues and alternative suggestions, I feel it is a shame she has not participated in the any workshops and presentations or fed in to the NICE effort or THC her opinions, they are all equally important."

Now it is worth pointing out that, regardless of her eventual views, Jeanne would not have been able to attend many of the weekly NICE meetings/workshops before Christmas. The great majority of them were held in the Sailing Club and unfortunately Jeanne was effectively excluded by the fact that she is unfortunately no longer able to climb stairs unaided. Jeanne and other disabled individuals, should they have wished to attend those meetings, would have been unable to do so.