For Argyll has received a statement from Argyll & Bute Council on its position vis a vis the Mid Argyll Swimming Pool. We are publishing this in full with a commentary below it.

The Council’s statement

‘In order for the Council to provide additional funding to Mid Argyll Swimming Pool or any other outside body with which we have a Service Level Agreement, we have to be confident in that organisation’s business case.

‘To date, we have not received all the detailed information requested from MACEL regarding its business projections over the coming three years. We therefore cannot properly assess the grounds for the funding request.

‘Local councillors have been kept informed of progress at every stage. As would be the case with any such similar request, there are at present no plans to take the matter to the full Council.

‘We have a responsibility to our taxpayers to assess every request for additional funding in the same rigorous and impartial manner, and to balance those requests against any available resources.

‘The Council is itself facing the prospect of an extremely challenging budget situation in 2010/2011, and is scrutinising all areas of expenditure.

‘As part of this process, the authority is working very hard at trying to find ways of maintaining existing levels of financial support for a variety of outside bodies.  In this climate, significantly increasing funding for MACEL without the necessary safeguard of a robust business case is out of the question.

‘It is not possible to directly compare levels of support between Argyll and Bute’s swimming pools because the Council has a greater or lesser involvement in each facility depending on its operational model. Several pools – such as Helensburgh and Campbeltown – are operated directly by the Council.

‘In the case of Oban, the Council decided a number of years ago to transfer its operation to Atlantis Leisure Ltd. The resulting agreement dictated the level of financial support to be provided by the Council in the future.

‘The Mid Argyll Swimming Pool does not fit into either of these models. It is a community business for which the Council has never had an operational responsibility.

‘Despite this, the Council has been providing – and continues to provide – significant technical support and advice to MACEL with a view to increasing the pool’s income and/or cutting costs.  This is in addition to the £61,000 per annum the Council currently gives it.

‘It is our understanding that MACEL receives no additional income from grant sources other than the Council. The Council’s Funding Officer is therefore liaising with the company to help in identifying potential sources of grant funding in the short term.

‘We are of the view that the package of support we are providing has the potential to enable the company to trade out of its current difficulties and therefore not require the additional funding it has requested.

‘The Chief Executive has been instrumental in organising this significant additional support, and is being kept fully briefed on the situation.

‘The pool board is still working through the implications of the Council’s advice as regards possible operational changes. This, coupled with the lack of robust financial figures to back up the request for extra funding, means a meeting with the Chief Executive would not be appropriate at this stage’.

Commentary

1 Operational models

The Council does not own the Mid Argyll Pool but neither does it own some of the other Argyll Pools. The statement suggests that there is a considerable variety of operating models among the Argyll pools so it may be sophist to say simply that the Mid Argyll pool is unlike any other model. It is possible that other of the pools are also unlike any other model.

1 Action

The public now needs to know the exact details of the ownership and operating circumstances of each of the Argyll pools in receipt of public funds.

Without a full and accurate statement from the Council to this effect, the comparative situation of the Mid Argyll Pool cannot be properly understood.

The figure of £61,000 current support given by the Council to the Mid Argyll Pool  – which we read as £48,000 for the current Service Level Agreement (expiring in March 2010) and £13,000 paid to the Pool by the council for swimming lessons for Primary School children -  is meaningless without the detailed comparative picture we would like to see.

2 Absence of three year business projections

It is unreasonable to expect that something so forensically detailed, financially defensible and long term could have been prepared in the 6 month life of this new Board. Through an inherited situation, the Pool has no manager nor has it had one for 18 months. With the current incumbent off sick for that time and legal niceties to be resolved, the post cannot be filled.

The new voluntary Board had to deal with an unimaginably chaotic non-administration when they took office to try to save a bankrupt operation – even needing to acquire an electronic till to account for cash transactions. With the inherited staffing situation, they have also had to run the Pool themselves.

They had urgent repairs to get done, because maintenance had not been carried out for a very long time. They have been constantly firefighting.

It is unrealistic – and bullying – to chastise them, to hold them wanting, for having been unable to perform the impossible. Where could they, in these circumstances, have found the tranquil time to get down to the detailed preparation of such three year projections?

2 Action

The Council should simply end this sadistic situation and arrange the legal adoption of the Pool, bite the bullet and look after Mid Argyll as it looks after other areas of Argyll.

3 No external funding

The Council statement says that it understands that MACEL is in receipt of no grant funding other than from the Council. The subtext here is that the new Board has been negligent in not seeking and securing such funding.

This implicit charge of fiscal irresponsibility raises two points.

As with the similar charge of not yet having submitted detailed three year financial plans, would the Council like to indicate just when and how these volunteer Board members could have found the time to run down and secure such external funding? They are already taking charge of the running of the pool and fighting to introduce stable management for what looks like the first time. Their Chair has made it plain that the uncertainty of the Pool’s future is preventing would-be funding organisations from offering support.

Then there is the case of the pot and the kettle in the case of failure to attract external funding. As we understand it, a few years ago the Council, – with a full time, paid, professional staff, failed on two successive occasions to secure European funding under the Special Islands Allowance. It beggars belief that a local authority like Argyll & Bute, with the weight of responsibilities it carries for its 25 inhabited islands, should have failed to secure funding so germane to its situation. The words ‘beam’ and ‘mote’ come to mind.

The Council is claiming new and substantial support for the MACEL Board on the external funding front by offering them the services of its funding officer. We have already said that this is an uninformed perspective. The officer in question is in heavy demand across this huge and dispersed territory and while whatever she can suggest will be added value, the Board will still have the work to do. Where will they get the time with no manager at the pool?

3 Action

As with Action 2, the need is to stop cavilling and take on the responsibility.

4 Trading out of its difficulties

The Council believes that the guidance and support it is giving should allow the Mid Argyll Pool to trade out of it difficulties. How can an organisation with an immediate deficit of £10,000, projecting an end of year loss and with no manager and no basic security keep trading at all, never mind trade out of it difficulties?

4 Action

If the Council feel that the Pool can trade its way out of its difficulties, where is the risk of adopting it as a Council responsibility and letting it do just that?

5 Not appropriate to meet with the CEO at this stage

The Council argues that because the Board is still working through both the Council’s advice on operational changes and on producing detailed 3 year financial plans, a meeting with the CEO is not appropriate at this stage.

So, when they’ve got it all sorted out for themselves what use will she be to them? They don’t need a post-traumatic pat on the back. With the treatment meted out to them further down the food chain, they need to talk things through on the evidence with someone with say-so.

5 Action

Get on with it. The real deal never plays the rank game.

See our earlier story: Mather to meet Board of Mid-Argyll Swimming Pool - a meeting due tomorrow (27th March) and to be accompanied by a discussion with Council officials.

Related Posts

• Join the Demo of the year for Mid Argyll Swimming Pool (4)
• Meeting of minds on Mid Argyll Swimming Pool (3)
• Save Our Pool: the day Mid Argyll became a community (17)
• Scottish Government criticised on waiting lists for childrens’ swimming lessons (1)
• Mather to meet Board of Mid Argyll Swimming Pool as Council pulls the plug (4)

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