Highland Council's Nairn Common Good 14 year mega mistakes - £187K cash back - what Laurie said plus Gurn opinion

Laurie was even briefer than Colin when it came to commenting on the tragedy that was the failure of Highland Council to implement subsequent rent increases for the Lochloy Caravan site on the behalf of Nairn Common Good fund. This is the final post of four detailing what our elected representatives said in Glenurquhart Road Council chamber yesterday (scroll down the Gurn for the others) as the assembled 80 members and their top officials prostrated their municipal selves and paid public penance eastwards towards our community, Ker-ching a result and £187K into the Nairn Common Good fund till. Laurie said:

“I’ll just be very brief, centralisation, you can’t blame this on the District Council, that’s one thing we know. So I would just...I would want to see the District Council back again and take control of our Common Good in Nairn. “

Laurie was to add a little more but first there was an intervention from Independent Cllr Margaret Davidson, the Aird and Loch Ness member. She asked:

“Has the internal auditor’s report been presented to the Nairn Committee and in public?” 

The reply came that it was a personal report that had been done for the chief executive and it has not been made public.

Laurie then said: “Can I just come back on that. I was always hoping that that report would actually come into the public domain.” 

Jimmy Gray, chairing the meeting said that Derek Yule (the Director of Finance)had offered to discuss the matter with Cllr Davidson. There then followed the unanimous decision to pay back £187,000 to the Nairn Common Good Fund.

Gurn opinion:

In retrospect it is probably better to wait this long time to get this cash, if it had been coming in over the years when it should have been perhaps it might have been wasted in the same appalling way that the fund has apparently been administered in the past. Now our four members have the opportunity to fully consult with the public and work out ways of wisely using this cash to generate more capital for the Common Good and to ensure the people of Nairn enjoy the benefit that the exposure of this appalling episode has rightfully brought to us at last. 

On the matter of drawing a line under this as Liz and Colin suggest, this observer feels that that cannot be done until the report that went to the Chief Executive is in the public domain and the citizens of Nairn can actually find out the full details of how these errors were made.