Time for rural communities to be granted equal recognition

COLUMN: The Way I See It by Richard Gale

As this is my first column since the elections, I want to thank everyone who voted for me. It is an honour to represent this ward and I can assure you that I will always strive to do my utmost to protect the interests of the people who live and work here.

I would like to record my congratulations to the Golspie Rowing Club on their outstanding performance at the world championships in the Netherlands. For a small community in the Highlands to come home in tenth place overall is fantastic and it just shows what can be achieved by hard work and dedication. Well done to everyone.

Now, to council matters. They say that a new broom sweeps clean and that certainly appears to be the case in this instance. However, this particular broom is already sweeping in a centralised motion. What steps that had been taken towards localism seem to have been swept away with local area committees being downgraded and financial uplifts to Inverness city committee with a committee chair, a new post of deputy leader and a provost and two deputy provosts. Previously the leader of the city committee was also the provost. So, a top-heavy administration for the city.

On a positive front the UK government's levelling up fund applications will be going forward for round two and I am pleased to see an application to improve the NC500 route, including parts of north and west Sutherland. Given the volume of traffic on the route, this is much needed.

Over the next period, work on the applications for the third round of the fund are being pulled together and for the Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross constituency, the proposal is solely focussed on funding for Caithness projects, predominantly around the harbour at Wick. This follows on from a massive investment programme to allow the harbour to service offshore windfarms.

Now, let me say at this point that I fully support investment in Caithness, indeed having family in Wick I am often in the county, and I can see that there is a need for investment. However, I cannot understand why that has to be to the exclusion of Sutherland. Apparently, this proposal was agreed in discussion with the leader of the Caithness area committee some time ago, yet no discussions were held to look at investment opportunities for Sutherland. At the full council meeting on Thursday June 30, I put forward an amendment to have a review of the third round and for that to include looking at possible investment opportunities in Sutherland and Easter Ross. You would think that would be a reasonable ask, but that request with verbal assurance that Sutherland would be looked at. While that was all well and good, in my opinion, if it is not in the papers there is no guarantee that it will happen. So, I had to force a vote to try and include my amendment in the papers, unfortunately that vote was lost. I am disappointed as it discounts any investment in Sutherland as part of the levelling up fund and that is an opportunity lost.

So, I have to say that I am concerned about the direction of travel that we seem to be heading along and I can only hope that as time goes by, we will see some recognition of the need to give greater consideration to rural communities. We are after all an integral part of the Highlands.

Richard Gale is the ward councillor for East Sutherland and Edderton.

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