Creich Community Council chairman Pete Campbell stands down after 20 years' service
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The long-serving chairman of Creich Community Council has stood down after nearly 20 years with the organisation.
But before he departed, Pete Campbell took a parting shot at Highland Council over the low level of grant aid given to community councils.
He also said the area badly needed money to address growing social deprivation, and community benefit from wind farms was a way of providing funding
Mr Campbell announced he was standing down both as chairman and as a community councillor during his chairman’s address at the council’s AGM, held in Bonar Bridge Community Hall last Tuesday.
He said: “I am not going to be attending any more meetings. I have been doing it for more than 20 years which is long enough. I turned 70 this year and always said to myself I would live my own life then and not do so much for people.”
He claimed that the biggest problem faced by the community council was the lack of financial support from the authority..
The authority provides annual core funding of £350 plus a top-up of 13p per elector in the community’s council’s area and a further £50 for groups serving rural areas.
“We get so little money it is barely enough to pay for insurances and the secretary’s stipend. It makes us incredibly ineffective” said Mr Campbell.
The lack of money saw Creich community council previously take the decision to meet every two months rather than every month.
Mr Campbell pointed out the valuable role served by community councils in representing the various communities in their areas.
He urged the newly elected council to take a “far more serious view” of community councils than their predecessors had done and said the council had made it clear they “did not care” by dragging their feet on a lot of issues flagged up to them.
On the issue of wind farms he said the area was badly in need of money and the only way to get that was to support some form of development.
He said the community council had to play a role in negotiating community benefit from potential wind farm developments and Mr Campbell offered to continue to help in this field
And he advised that the management of such funds should not be done by the community council but by the Kyle of Sutherland Development Trust which was set up to “multiply money and distribute it fairly and see to the needs of local people.”
The council elected Keith Williams, the director of Kyle Fisheries, as its new chairman.
