At last week's meeting of River Community Council, Simon Noble gave those assembled an update on the organisation's various potential projects:
“You may recall a couple of meetings ago the community
council agreed that we should endeavour to set up a working group to take
forward our ideas about the maintenance of the common areas in Nairn. We had
made a pitch last year to the Community Challenge Fund to, at that point we
were inviting the Council to explore with us the possibilities of the Community
Council taking on some of the services currently operated by the Council which
they wanted to hand over under the community challenge fund. So that was one
project, another one was to take forward some of the work that had been
successfully done under leader funding with the river regeneration. The third
idea had been to do with the recycling/reuse project that had been floated
The Community Council agreed that we would try and set up a
steering group to see how we might take that forward and in the intervening
time we have had discussions with Highland Council’s Employability Service
because the newly announced Deprived Area Fund some of which has been
specifically allocated for Nairn. We had discussions with Highland Council’s
ward manager and with Highland Councillors and, as a result, we made a pitch
for the deprived area fund money to help us to take the project forward. We
would not have the capacity to do it on our own. We made a pitch for that
funding and that funding was to help us to pay for someone to project manage on
our behalf in the early stages of looking at what is the best way to develop
our approach to these three projects.
We invited a range of people from across
the community to come to a meeting on the 18th of June. That range
of people included some of our local politicians, two members of the Community
Council (myself and Tommy), but also one of the local church ministers, two
local business owners and another business manager and the manager of CAB. A cross
section of people who are not the usual suspects but also who have good
investment in the town and an interest in supporting developments in community
enablement if you like.
The outcome of all of that has been that Highland Council
through the Area Committee awarded £5,000 through the Deprived Area fund to
facilitate this project and to enable us to get started by hiring, in due
course, a project manager just to take forward building the ideas, getting in
place the kind of legal framework that we will need. Also putting together a
basic business pitch for public funding to get the thing moving and also to
help us in developing our discussions with Highland Council about the Community
Challenge Fund pitch that we had made last year. We were really pleased about
that and the group when it met on the 18th gave us loads of sensible
advice, not the least of which and probably the best advice was, keep it simple
don’t try and get more complicated and clever about everything. So the conclusion
of the meeting it was agreed that our priority should be to take forward a development
of a social enterprise which will in the first instance seek to get an
agreement with Highland Council to take on maintenance of selective common areas
in the town. That’s what is commonly called the grass cutting but there is an
awful lot more to it than that.
The object of the social enterprise is, first and foremost,
to create routes to employment for local people. So the possibility of training,
apprenticeship, that kind of thing. The vehicle would be this common areas
maintenance work and the long term aim if that proves to be successful and sustainable
to develop something which could then take forward the ideas about recycling
and reuse schemes and the river regeneration scheme. At this stage that is as
far as we have got. We have a further meeting coming up next month.”
Tommy Hogg said: “I’m quite impressed with the way it is all
coming together and when you see what can be done and you see it all set out in
front of you. I know there are a lot of pitfalls but I honestly think myself
that it can be achieved with sensible ideas and slowly, not just diving in. It’s
going to take a lot of business management things that have to be addressed. [...]
If it is carefully thought about and we don’t get too ambitious, I think it
could actually work.”
Colin MacAulay then said: “This isn’t easy, this is about
taking on, effectively considering taking on a contract and all that then
entails in terms of responsibilities to staff, employing staff, taking on their
training, health and safety. There is just a barrow load – it’s a major commitment
and the Council will be very supportive both on the Community Challenge side of
things and both on the employability and from the local politicians but is
about capacity of individuals in the community that want to take on the role of
delivering a social enterprise and that’s a bit undertaking.”
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