‘I want to bring back local democracy to Nairn, it is long overdue,’ Nairn Provost backs Highland Council break-up
Nairn’s Provost wants to see the break-up of Highland Council in a bid to “bring back local democracy to Nairn”.
Laurie Fraser is backing a motion to this week’s full council meeting that calls on it to take up “offers made” by members of the Scottish Government to conduct a review into what form of local government would best serve the Highlands.
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That could lead to the end of the local authority in its current form.
Caithness councillor Andrew Jarvie has submitted the motion backed by three group leaders as well as Councillor Fraser.
“Break up Highland Council, I have had enough of it – I want to bring back local democracy to Nairn, it is long overdue,” the Nairn Provost said.
He was a district councillor before the reorganisation of local government in 1996 saw the two-tier structure of regional and district councils abolished and replaced with 32 unitary authorities, including the current Highland Council.
He believes that, since then, power has leached away from other areas to Inverness.
He said: “We have lost so much democracy, we lost control of our budgets, it is all done from Inverness and I have had enough of it.
“I used to sit on the district council so I know how well the district council was run, it was all done locally: we had a six week cycle of eight meetings and working groups that worked extremely well and it was an extremely efficient service that we provided to the people of Nairn.
“And we would be far more efficient going back to the district council days, we certainly need to take control of planning – that is something we need to do locally. Inverness is pushing all these houses and it is not good for the local community, they are walking all over us.”
Cllr Fraser also disagrees with the notion that an authority the size of Highland Council provides valuable “economies of scale”.
“Highland Council is not efficient,” he said. “When they created this thing 30 years or so ago they were only saving £3 million.
“The reality is money isn’t everything – you have to look at how your community is run.
“If we could set our own taxes as we did in the past with the district council we could run a far better service - and Nairn in those days had one of the lowest council taxes in Scotland.
“My view now is that we should have a Nairn council back, Inverness should have its own city council. We don’t want a situation where we are just a suburb of Inverness – I don’t want to see that.
“You want stability in the community and you don’t get that with Highland Councill.”
And he added: “In the old days we had 10 councillors and we had three regional council members and you could pay them with the money that the four councillors get right now.”
Cllr Jarvie – whose mother Barbara is also a councillor for Nairn and Cawdor – said of his motion: “After nearly eight years as a councillor, one thing above all is abundantly clear. The Highland Council covers far too large an area.
“Even the best and most efficiently run council could not deliver the range of services and meet the needs of such a diverse area, it’s an impossible challenge – saying so isn’t a criticism, it’s the simple reality of what we all know and see.
“The biggest issue is the structure of the size and makeup of the council area. It is impossible for one council to be equally focused on an area like Inverness, which continues to grow and attract investment, as it is the Far North where population is in a concerning decline.
“An area this size was an experiment which began in the 1990s with the reorganisation of Scottish councils and brought all the former district councils to an end, but nowhere saw quite as radical a change as the Highlands.
“This was an outcome forced up on us by the government of the time, and after 30 years of trying I think we have seen enough ourselves to say it clearly isn’t working.”
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