Earlier this week we posted an article concerning a recent meeting for Highland Council workforce members in Nairn. At that meeting the Gurn understands that outcomes concerning potential forthcoming cuts were discussed. Our article: "Threat to Nairn's Balblair Road Council depot" is here.
We asked the Council the precise nature of that meeting and whether it concerned redundancies. This is the prompt reply we got on Monday morning.
"Staff received a briefing in advance of Phase 2 of the Council’s budget consultation starting later this week. The meeting was about service provision and budget pressures and not a meeting to discuss redundancies specifically. No decisions about changes have been made as Phase 2 of the consultation has not happened."
Tonight STV state on their website: "Highland Council expects to shed 1000 jobs over the next four years as a result of £64m worth of budget cuts." More on the STV site here.
Gurn opinion: In a vacuum rumours will abound. It is now time for the Highland Council to put any information released to the local workforce into the public domain. We have the right to know just how our local services may be affected and then we can digest that information and form an opinion as to whether we think any outcomes are fair to our community and what is the amount of job losses that we might see because once these sort of jobs are gone from Nairn they won't return.