I so, so hope that this is soon …

Comment posted on Muirfield: a victory for right by Angus Parent

I so, so hope that this is soon officially confirmed and that Angus Council will take a good hard look at how they have come to sink to this level.

Chief Executive, Richard Stiff, appears to have a good history of openness prior to his arrival at Angus, and to have tendencies towards transparency. I believe his blog and use of twitter is no cynical front but reflects his philosophy as to what public services should be about.

A council that is labelled as lacking even a basic level of transparency by such a high authority on his watch – and he’s been there for just about a year now so can’t pin it on “the way things were before him” – will damage his personal reputation if he fails to act on this.

I know he isn’t responsible for elected councillors like Peter Nield. But Neil Logue reports directly to him.

I hope Mr Stiff has the level of integrity I suspect he has and now moves strongly to put his house in order. His background is in Education so there’s no person more suited to the job. I hope he rises to the challenge.

Angus Parent also commented

  • The upcoming council meeting will not be open to the public, according to The Courier:

    http://www.thecourier.co.uk/News/Angus/article/20706/angus-council-planning-to-discuss-arbroath-schools-saga-behind-closed-doors.html

  • Re The Courier being unavailable in Argyll…

    I’ve started a “news timeline” of all this on my blog and updated it to include links to the latest Courier articles and also the wonderfully timed John O’Groat Journal article which quotes Highland Council as saying that Angus’s Arbroath schools project document presents “a model template of good practice” (their quotation marks, not mine).

    I think I’ve got all the relevant Courier articles starting with “Arbroath school consultation is overshadowed by row over ‘railroaded’ report” from February a year ago.

    Probably best if I don’t link to the blog here, but if you google the post title it’s about the only thing you’ll see:

    News Timeline of Muirfield and Timmergreens Primary Schools Closures Debacle

  • From the Angus Council website:

    “A report setting the options now available to the council will be submitted to the full meeting of Angus Council at 11am on Thursday 9 February.”

    (http://www.angus.gov.uk/new/releases-archive/2012/2012-02-02a.html)

    Don’t know if this is something that is open to the public or not, but if it is, it might be worth attending.

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44 Responses to I so, so hope that this is soon …

  1. Excellent news. Score another victory for the good guys (and girls). Had these proposals not been rejected it would have been a slap in the face for civic Scotland and in the face of common sense.

    Hopefully someone in Angus Council will now do the decent and resign.

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  2. It may have taken a long time to get this result, but it just goes to show patience can pay off. But that aside it has to be said that the work put in by Ewan to refute all that was being said by Angus Council has been long & sometimes frustrating. If they had listened at the beginning of this process it would never have arrived at this stage, not only that if they had listened they could have used the time it has taken to more effective use. Well done to everyone concerned, lets hope now this will see all schools in the town receiving the much needed funding to ensure they are to the required standard for our childrens future education.

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  3. WOW!! Absolutely fantastic news!!

    An enormous thank you to all who have worked so hard to get this achieved result. The sheer slog of hard work and investigation by Ewan and others has paid off.

    Congratulations to all for determination and persistence.

    I just hope now that the reasons for rejection by SG are made known fully to the public. Mr Logue accused Ewan Smith of promulgatting inaccurate facts. (Ewan had evidence to back all he said.)This would be a good time to “promulgate” all the facts, and not portray Ewan as the “bad guy”, which Angus Council have tried to do. Some of the evidence uncovered may come as a shock to those who were in favour of the proposal. Many are still in ignorance of the real cost of a new school, not to mention the latest revelations.

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  4. RESULT!!!! (and yes I’m shouting from the roof tops!!)

    Can I just say that at last common sence has prevailed in this case. Ewan put up a magnificent fight against the wrong doings of Angus Council Education Dept. We owe him a huge gratitude for his time effort and most of all patience. However I would like to say a huge thank you to all of you from the For Argyll team and all those who took the time to comment you have been a tremendous support. I will continue to read your pages with great interest and hope I can offer support where required.

    Lets hope other excellent schools can be saved from demolotion!!

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  5. ACE!!!!!! Well done to all!! Fantastic efforts. It is just sad that all this effort is required to uncover the facts on how poorly the Council has acted ‘on the behalf’ of the Angus and Arbroath people. I hope changes are made to ensure this type of irresponsible behaviour is prevented from reoccurring.

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  6. I just want to make a quick comment, with the promise of a longer one later.

    My over-riding emotion right now is not one of jubilation but one of relief. It’s relief that all the hard work paid off and – eventually – someone was prepared to listen. It’s relief that my children still have their fantastic school and won’t have to cross an incredibly busy road to go to a school that would drown them by its size. It’s also relief that we were able to show what a catastrophic blunder our council was about to make in shutting down a school (s) that was and were not in the condition they tried to fool everyone into believing.

    I hope now we can have some transparency over surveyor reports and consultation and do right by all the children in Arbroath, not just feed someone’s ego trip. All the surveyor reports for Arbroath have to be ripped up. They do not reflect the true state of the schools and if our council truly intends spending £8 million on improving the school estate then let’s do it properly.

    Thank-you to everyone – of which there are many – who helped us. This was by no means a one-man operation or even a small band of people. So many in Arbroath and in Argyll have played their part and many will never truly get the credit they deserve (you know who you are!).

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  7. I so, so hope that this is soon officially confirmed and that Angus Council will take a good hard look at how they have come to sink to this level.

    Chief Executive, Richard Stiff, appears to have a good history of openness prior to his arrival at Angus, and to have tendencies towards transparency. I believe his blog and use of twitter is no cynical front but reflects his philosophy as to what public services should be about.

    A council that is labelled as lacking even a basic level of transparency by such a high authority on his watch – and he’s been there for just about a year now so can’t pin it on “the way things were before him” – will damage his personal reputation if he fails to act on this.

    I know he isn’t responsible for elected councillors like Peter Nield. But Neil Logue reports directly to him.

    I hope Mr Stiff has the level of integrity I suspect he has and now moves strongly to put his house in order. His background is in Education so there’s no person more suited to the job. I hope he rises to the challenge.

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    • For Angus Parent: It is hard to see why the CEO – or Education Director Neil Logue himself – would not now see an unanswerable reason to consider Mr Logue’s position.

      His work on this proposal has brought Angus Council to a low point of trustability with its integrity not only challenged but left threadbare.

      The words ‘bringing into disrepute’ are barely adequate to describe the reputational damage his management of this proposal has inflicted upon this council – and we speak as an admirer of much work Angus Council has done – as in its unmatched funding advice service to community and voluntary sector groups and projects.

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  8. On reading the SG letter I am still obviously pleased at the result but find that pleasure a little tarnished by the fact the call in is purely on the gradings as this gives a lot of scope to the Council to return with fresh assessments and an audit trail to support it (whether or not the fresh assessments are ‘kosher’ or not’. (Although I recognise that, reading between the lines a little, the SG are not saying your conditions are iffy – they are saying you manipulated them, and hopefully that will have longer term ramifications in terms of future proposals and a lack of trust/confidence).

    I find it disturbing though that the road safety aspects are considered a concern but one that ‘could be developed as the design of the new school progresses.’ The road safety concerns are enormous and it is reckless to say ‘aargh well go ahead, I’m sure you’ll sort that eventually.’ As far as I am concerned all such issues (and certainly one as fundamental as child safety) should be comprehensively addressed AND costed as part of the proposal.

    May is just around the corner and I hope that it brings about a new administration for Angus which is more tuned into an honest approach to policy and consultation. That is the best outcome for Muirfield and Timmergreens.

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    • For Integrity? Not in the CondemAll:

      Re your first paragraph above, we read in the decision letter a degree of – shall we call it ‘discretion’? – which may be due to internal – shall we call it ‘discomfort’ ? – at the direction of travel of earlier informal communications with the council.

      It is hard to imagine that any fair survey of these two schools would result in leaving them open to repeated threat on these grounds.

      Given the proven chicanery around this matter, any new survey could only be trusted if the parent councils had a supervisory role and, better, a parallel independent surveyor of their own commissioning.

      Re your second paragraph on the road safety issues as accounted for in Mr Moore’s letter: this is irresponsible and quite shockingly cavalier.

      It is particularly so in its willingness to leave the matter to the discretion of a council that had demonstrated its willingness to produce a deliberately blinkered safety assessment in the greater interests of its own intentions.

      This identifies a fundamental disconnection between politicians and their civil servants and the reality of the situations their decisions license.

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  9. Is the Courier a Council fanzine?
    http://www.thecourier.co.uk/News/Angus/article/20604/education-secretary-delivers-shocking-new-twist-in-arbroath-school-saga.html

    Not sure how this is a ‘shocking new twist’ – it has been on the cards for ages.

    It would also appear Cllr Neild is still telling porkies – I thought it had been clearly established that Audit Scotland had not given this the green light as there had been no communication between the Council and AS. It also misses the point that none of the bodies he quotes have the jurisdiction to approve the application.

    I do like the High Court threat though. Based on the good work carried out by MAG I doubt there are many in the Council who would support the idea of taking this to court – that is a little like an elephant painting a target on its side in the hunting season! It would of course be a further waste of public money however it doesn’t appear Cllr Nield is too fussed about doing that.

    Another porkie told when he says the Education minister has no more info now than he dud in July. I think Ewan can prove that isn’t the case and has already done so.

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    • It would appear Councillor Neild/Nield/Nailed is using his public mouthpiece to vent “soor grapes”.

      Although it would be a completely irresponsible waste of taxpayers money taking this to court, part of me would love that to happen, just to see the Council properly taken apart and that dodgy online consultation thoroughly investigated.

      Maybe the Courier will give Mr Nelid a job after the elections in May. Or then again, could he screw up being a paperboy as well?

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  10. A MASSIVE SIGH OF RELIEF. Well done to Ewan and his team and a massive thank you to everyone from For Argyll and your support.
    I agree with angus parent the C E at Angus council must put his house in order; the councillors that have tried to railroad this through will be judged in the May elections.

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  11. Delighted with the decision, a tad perturbed by the letter, i take objection to the fact that they acknowledge it was reffered to in call in requests but that there was no evidence, i don’t see the roll of the parents as that of investigators, i though that was what the call in was for, to allow the government to investigate the details of the closure in question. All though it does explain why these decisions seem to be hit or miss, it seems we have a lot to be thankful for with the persistance of people like Ewan. Viva la people. :D

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  12. Agree with Integrity. Very disapppointed in The Courier report. It makes Ewan and MAG sound like they have deprived children of the money for the new school, which according to their report, may now go to sea front defences. Many will still believe this money aspect, and there is no mention of the £700K interest per annum, let alone paying back the £8 million, nor the cutbacks in teaching staff.

    Yes Audit Scotland giving clearance? Where, when? Where are the records?

    The Roads Dept definitely did not give clearance and I would question Tayside Police being too happy either without having sufficient parking spaces, or the congestion caused by it.

    Cleared by the Procurator Fiscal sevices? Just because there was insufficient evidence to prosecute does not make it permissible.

    It talks about Muirfield and Timmergreens schools being not filled to capacity. It does not say many schools have similar capacities, or SG’s aim to reduce class sizes especially in P1 to 18, or SG’s aim to increase Nursery places.

    Peter Nield complains that Mike Russell has used delay tactics for political reasons. If it were but known, the school would never have been voted in, but for council members sticking to their political Alliance group and not considering all the facts – which were flawed in any case.

    I was looking forward to Neil Logue and Peter Nield being given a slap in the face in the press, but here we go again. It is blame Mike Russell, Scottish Government,Ewan, MAG and any one else who has tried to stop the new school.

    I wish The Courier could give Ewan and others, the accolade they deserve as ForArgyll has done, instead of this account.

    Once again, a million thanks to ForArgyll for your marvellous well documented articles and your support.

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    • I too have been very disappointed by the manner in which The Courier has reported on the ‘good news story’ of the Muirfield Action Group’s success. This follows their report following Neil Logue’s letter of 13 January to the Scottish Government.

      (In that letter,that was also published on Angus Council’s web site, Mr Logue did not confine himself to making comment on the salient issues. It was astonishing that Council employee had been allowed to make comment on the actions that a named member of the public was taking to raising objection to a council proposal on the Council’s web site).

      Unprofessional and undemocratic. I hope that someone at Angus House addresses this issue – Ewan Smith deserves an apology.

      Ewan Smith had no right of reply on the Angus Council website. It seemed unfair to me that the Courier article about Angus Council’s letter gave Mr Logue yet another opportunity to publically voice his personal opinions about an irrelevant matter; how the action group had decided to conduct their campaign.

      I have only recently started to follow this story on ForArgyll – thank you for the excellent coverage!

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  13. This has made my day! Well done to Ewan Smith and the Muirfield action group for ensuring that the best decison has been reached for the children who attend Muirfield and Timmergreens Schools. Angus Council clearly forgot about what was really important here – the children.

    It is now surely time that this incompetent and discourteous Director of Education is expelled from Angus Council?

    Mr Logue – you can’t cover up THIS mistake!!!

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  14. Huge and warm congratulations to Ewan and MAG and all who supported them.

    Short pause, and then on to make sure that Cllr Neild/Neald/Nield/Neal/Kneeled isn’t a councillor after the May election;-)

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  15. I for one will be attending the meeting, I would like to see what reasonable thoughts they could come up with to warrant wasting more time & money on this project( shame we wont be allowed some sort of input). I would also at this time like to point out that although Cllr Neild is quite rightly getting a lot of flack with regards to the school I would like to point out other councillors are also for the school but more importantly only one Councillor representing this ward voted against(namely Cllr King) so I truely believe Cllrs Fairweather & Lumgair share a good part of the blame of not representing the communities views in the first place. These people were entrusted with looking after the future of our children & in my opinion failed to do so at the outset by ignoring the concerns of parents/future parents & on occasions suggesting it was the parents who were selfish in their aims to prevent the school going ahead.

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  16. The meeting next week is a complete waste of time if it is to discuss continuing with the proposal to close down Muirfield and Timmergreens or to challenge the Scottish Government’s decision to reject it.

    Given that the surveyor reports have been deemed as flawed and inaccurate by The Scottish Government, then surely these can no longer be used as a vehicle to propose the future closure of these schools?

    They now have £8 million to spend that had previously been pledged for the Arbroath Schools Project – not specifically this new build – and if they REALLY care about our children they will begin using the money wisely.

    That could make a LOT of difference to schools across our town and, if people are properly consulted, our Council will have a chance to get it right.

    People don’t want mergers. They don’t want schools in the wrong location, schools that will officially be the biggest in Angus. They want improvements at their own school and a bit of commonsense that the current climate lends itself to refurbishing the ten schools we have in the burgh.

    The silence from our Council since the rejection has been deafening. Aside from the customary Nield rant, it has taken them three days to confirm the rejection on their official website and they continue telling us that they still believe the merger of Muirfield and Timmergreens is the best solution for the ‘declining physical state’ of the buildings. On what basis are the schools in a ‘declining physical state?’

    Is this based on new surveyor reports or the kiddy-on ones we had to endure for the past three years?

    Rip up your invalid surveyor reports and bin your dodgy consultation. Do PROPER surveys on all the schools – without pre-conceived ideas on what ones you want to attempt to close down – and ask open ended, genuine questions.

    It’s not rocket-science. Is it?

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  17. Much better article in The Courier today. This time a story with a happy ending!! A lovely photograph of beaming smiles from Ewan and his son and daughter. Incidentally Karen is not Ewan’s wife!! She is a mother with the same passion against the school proposal as Ewan, who just happens to have the same name!!

    The photograph is accompanied by words of wisdom by Ewan and Councillor Sheena Welsh.

    Ewan also featured on STV news last night. Ewan deserves all the happy stories he can he can get. He has done it for the children and not for political reasons. When you see happy smiling children, that is what makes it all worth while.

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  18. Re The Courier being unavailable in Argyll…

    I’ve started a “news timeline” of all this on my blog and updated it to include links to the latest Courier articles and also the wonderfully timed John O’Groat Journal article which quotes Highland Council as saying that Angus’s Arbroath schools project document presents “a model template of good practice” (their quotation marks, not mine).

    I think I’ve got all the relevant Courier articles starting with “Arbroath school consultation is overshadowed by row over ‘railroaded’ report” from February a year ago.

    Probably best if I don’t link to the blog here, but if you google the post title it’s about the only thing you’ll see:

    News Timeline of Muirfield and Timmergreens Primary Schools Closures Debacle

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    • To be fair to Highland they were probably comparing Angus with Argyll and Bute whose proposals were a template of bad practise. All things are relative.

      Thanks for the links to the Angus story lines. I am sort of hoping that with the decision having fallen the way it has you will all live happily ever after (at least post-May) and we in Argyll only ever hear good news stories emanating from your part of the world.

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  19. Re the Council meeting next Thursday that appears to be in the mode of ‘Carry on Regardless’. Have been looking over past Courier reports about the ‘process’ on line.
    6 months ago (report 16/08/11)some Councillors had approached CEO, Richard Stiff with concerns and proposed an ‘investigation’ about what was going wrong. At that stage it was being referred to as ‘Angus Council’s Watergate Scandal’.
    Perhaps there will be enough Councillors in attendance on 9/2/11 who have really given thought to what has happened so far. Angus Council has been brought into disrepute – perhaps they will have the gumption to demand the investigation some sought last year.
    Given the fact that the Scottish Government has now made an official judgement against the proposal – it is vital that the authority takes time to examine why this ‘project’ has failed. Surely they must call the Director of Education to account before trying to advance a flawed proposal against democratic opposition? They have already been accused of not being ‘transparent’ in respect of how Council business has been conducted. It is time to clean up their act.
    Apart from the main issue here – this is costing everyone in Angus money at a time of ‘financial restraint’. Not only does it appear that the Council’s desire is to flog a ‘dead donkey’- if they persist with this project they are expecting Angus council tax payers to continue to pay for the ‘administration’ of the flogging!
    Certainly to proceed without an investigation would demonstrate a complete disregard of this ‘dirty’ situation. This flawed project has already caused disruption and distress to the people affected by their ‘proposal’.
    Will the meeting be held in Council Chamber in centre of Forfar or the Council’s ‘fortress’ (Angus House) in the middle of nowhere?
    I am concerned that although a major battle has been won the war is not yet over.

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    • For Fiona McClymont: Here is another major issue.

      Because the fraudulent online survey was undertaken during the pre-consultation phase – which has no statutory authority – it cannot be considered under the Act.

      HOWEVER – SRSN can point to documented evidence showing that in the Spring of 2011, during the formal statutory consultation, the council made formal written use of the results of the survey to support their case for closure.

      They did this in full knowledge that the survey was fraudulent and that its results were worthless.

      This behaviour DOES come under the scrutiny of the Act and of Scottish Ministers.

      It is entirely of a piece with the general evidenced willingness of the council to concoct and distort evidence where it suits.

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      • Just for clarity the proposal paper for the closure of Muirfield and Timmergreens contains this statement..

        “3.8 The outcome from this consultation exercise confirmed that there was support for a new primary school in the west of the town, subject to the Council addressing parental concerns about pupils crossing the Westway and undertaking a full assessment of four potential site options to identify the preferred site for the new
        primary school (report 427/10 refers)”

        The consultation documentation makes specific reference to report 427/10 in support of the argument for the very existence of the proposal. The report which is relied upon makes multiple statements which are simply not supported by evidence. 428/10 does make a caveat about the reliability of the information from the survey but then goes on to draw conclusions which simply cannot be substantiated. These conclusions are clearly based on the results of the flawed survey.
        I personally attended every one of the informal public meetings which surrounded the survey and other members of SRSN attended many of the meetings organised for Parent Councils. The Council reporting of these meetings in no way reflects the level of public opposition which was evident from the start of this process. The misrepresentation of the views of two rural communities at a time when they knew the survey was a fraud is nothing short of scandalous.

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  20. I am stunned to read in today’s Courier that Angus Councillors are holding Thursday’s meeting behind closed doors – barring menbers of the public. They have just been accused of a lack of transparency by the Scottish Government!!! They must surely be in line for the award for the most undemocratic local authority in the UK let alone Scotland.

    Perhaps we can hope that the reason for this is that they will have a serious personnel issues to discuss in relation to this mess and that this prevents them from allowing the public to be present.

    MAG/SRSN your honest campaigning deserves better treatment than this. Any Councillors with an ounce of decency will now surely be demanding a thorough, transparent and independent investigation of this scandal – if not then they should stand accused of bringing the council into disrepute!

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  21. In an era where you can watch the Scottish and UK parliaments on TV and read verbatim reports of all their proceedings it’s high time councils caught up. Argyll & Bute Council is also reluctant to make its proceedings available and there can be few legitimate reasons for that. There will be a few but they’ll be in the minority.

    One A&B councillor defended their right to secrecy by saying that if meetings were recorded or broadcast “Councillors couldn’t be frank.” You have to wonder how they made it into the twenty-first century alive.

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  22. I yet again find myself being shocked at Angus Councils elected members inability to show that they can be open & transparent, the very fact that they want to exclude members of the public & press from proceedins with regard to the schools project is rediculous. Its not like we are unaware of the situation. I would urge anyone in Angus to contact all 29 councillors on the council. Below is a list of all 29 e-mails for Angus councillors:
    CllrMyles@angus.gov.uk, CllrMackintosh@angus.gov.uk, CllrLeslieMelville@angus.gov.uk, CllrMurphy@angus.gov.uk, CllrAndrews@angus.gov.uk, CllrBrown@angus.gov.uk, CllrLumgair@angus.gov.uk, CllrFairweather@angus.gov.uk, CllrMay@angus.gov.uk,
    CllrMillar@angus.gov.uk, CllrNield@angus.gov.uk, CllrRymer@angus.gov.uk, CllrSalmond@angus.gov.uk, CllrThomson@angus.gov.uk, CllrWhyte@angus.gov.uk,
    CllrEvans@angus.gov.uk, CllrGaul@angus.gov.uk, CllrKing@angus.gov.uk,
    CllrLee@angus.gov.uk, CllrMiddletonB@angus.gov.uk, CllrMiddletonG@angus.gov.uk,
    CllrMurray@angus.gov.uk, CllrMorrison@angus.gov.uk, CllrOswald@angus.gov.uk,
    CllrValentine@angus.gov.uk, CllrWelsh@angus.gov.uk, CllrWest@angus.gov.uk,
    cllrboyd@angus.gov.uk, CllrSpink@angus.gov.uk

    If they decide to go ahead with the review what service will they remove funding from to pay for it.

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