Council confirms latest offer of extended tick for Mid Argyll Pool

Read all of the articles we’ve published on this page to get the context of this issue – whichis not going to go away.

There is embedded community determination to bring the Council to an acceptance of it just responsibilities in financial support for the community-owned Mid Argyll Swimming Pool.

The Council has just issued a Press Release, quoted verbatim below, which demonstrates:

• the fiscal irresponsibility to which we have previously referred – in simply offering to give the pool more advances against the same inadequate and inequitable level of funding that has been and remains the case at the moment. If one was a devotee of conspiracy theory (we’re of the cock-up school ourselves) it would be possible to wonder if the Council was being deeply machiavellian. The level of fiscal incompetence in this stance is so bizarre that it raises the possibility that the real plan is to lure the new Board into a point of financial no-return.
• an absolute lack of awareness of the wrong and perceived wrong of its position – and a blinkered determination to keep on digging. This is also politically unintelligent.

The game goes on.

The only fair outcome is that the Council accepts the relative historic and present inequity in its support for the Mid Argyll Pool:

• pays off its £35,000 debt and operating deficit for the year
• and gives it parity of support with the other community-owned pool on Islay.

Question now put to the Council

Before moving to the verbatim text of the Council’s Press Release issued this norning, here is the text of a question we have now submitted.

‘It occurs to us tat we keep noting that the Council offers no defence of the relatively inequitable support it offers the Mid Argyll Pool. Yet we’ve never asked for that defence.

‘So we are now.

‘We’d be glad of a statement on the reason why – historically and currently – the Council has supported this pool – demonstrably and on a like-for-like basis – to a significantly lesser level than, for example, its sister community-owned pool on Islay.

‘All we need is the why.

‘There may well be a very good and persuasive reason why this has been and continues to be the case and, if so, it is very much in the Council’s interests to put that forward in the public domain’.

The Council’s Press Release

Argyll and Bute Council’s Executive has discussed a report on the latest position regarding Mid Argyll Swimming Pool.

The document confirms that the authority continues to provide significant support to the pool’s owner and operator, Mid Argyll Community Enterprise Ltd (MACEL), as it works to overcome its financial difficulties.

This support includes the offer, in principle, to bring forward the grant funding scheduled for payment in the first quarter of 2010/11 to the last quarter of the current financial year.

This offer is conditional on MACEL supplying an acceptable three year business plan projection which demonstrates how it intends to address its deficit as well as increase its trading income and grant funding from external sources.

The company has also been advised that its plan should demonstrate the extent to which it is prepared to adopt potential cost saving measures highlighted by Council staff.

This is the second time the Council has offered to accelerate funding to the pool’s Board. The last grant instalment for 2009/10, which was due to be paid next month, has already been transferred to MACEL.

Argyll and Bute Council Leader, Councillor Dick Walsh, stressed that the Council is committed to continuing to support the facility in overcoming its current problems.

‘We are fully aware of the benefits which the pool brings to the community of Mid Argyll, and we have been working very closely with MACEL since it first raised its concerns earlier this year,” he added.

‘The support we have been providing – and will continue to provide – includes our staff giving technical and professional guidance to assist in identifying options for reducing running costs and/or increasing income. It also includes helping MACEL try to identify alternative sources of grant funding’.

Councillor Walsh went on to address the criticism the Council has received from various sources for not providing the additional funding which MACEL has requested.

‘It is extremely unfortunate that some people have chosen to portray the Council as acting in some way unreasonably or unfairly in this regard,’ he added.

‘This Council has a duty to comply with various statutory requirements when considering payments to outside organisations.

‘One such requirement is that there needs to be a clear and robust financial framework surrounding any payments made, with a risk assessment in place.

‘This can only be met if the Council has had the opportunity to review a comprehensive business plan which lays out the income, expenditure and performance targets of the organisation which is requesting the money.

‘We look forward to MACEL providing us with such a document so that, in the first instance, we can make arrangements to bring the first tranche of next year’s funding forward into this financial year.

‘In the meantime we will continue to work very closely with the pool’s Board, and look forward to assisting it to make further progress in balancing its books over the coming months’.