For Argyll

Residents at a sheltered housing complex, Ferfadd Court in Rothesay’s Bridge Street, and at 11 other complexes owned by Argyll Community Housing Association (ACHA), are anxious about cost-cutting plans which would see the compkete loss of an overnight warden service in the complexes; see the day service reduced to four hours where at Ferfadd Court this service is currently available for eighteen hours a day; and see jobs cut from eleven full-time and eleven part-time to six full-time and six part-time. This would be done through a combination of natural wastage and twinning sheltered housing complexes - meaning that each has half the service it used to have. Charges may also be introduced for communal services.

ACHA insists that the programme of cuts has been forced on it by the withdrawal in March of a government grant of £274,000 which had been used to pay for sheltered housing wardens.

Obviously the loss of access to a resident warden in night-time emergencies is of great concern to elderly residents. ACHA’s proposed replacement for such a service is to maintain the existing Hanover Telecare support system, when residents can contact an Edinburgh call centre outside normal hours. Whatever swift responses might be possible via such a service, residents of sheltered housing in Rothesay on the west coast Isle of Bute are, reasonably, unlikely to feel reassured by access to a remote call centre in an east coast city.