General Meeting 4th December 2023
GOVAN COMMUNITY COUNCIL
GENERAL MEETING MONDAY 4 DECEMBER
Held in the Board Room, Elderpark Workspace at 7 p.m.
Present: Esme Clark, Daniel O’Neill, Hannah Salome, Reinhild Gorniak, Betty Ross, John Foster, Councillor Stephen Dornan, Alistair Shaw (representing Chris Stephens MP) In attendance: Gordon MacKay.
Apologies Annie Morgan, Cllrs Alam and Bell, Chris Stephens MP, and Alan Bell
Minute taker: John Foster
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MINUTES OF THE NOVEMBER MEETING
These were moved as correct by Hannah Salome and Esme Clark -
MATTERS ARISING
a) Use of Maslow’s for a Community Council surgery
Esme will contact Ruby Kelly about potential use of Maslow’s as a drop-in centre whereby advice can be given on local issues and who to contact.
b) Community Space: Hannah will come back to this issue
c) Assessment of the November Public Meeting
Although smaller than the first public meeting, it was felt that the discussion was more focussed and useful contacts were made. The Govan Letter distribution by Royal Mail was patchy but probably a majority of houses were covered. It would therefore be sensible to continue with Royal Mail for the time-being.
Contributions from invited speakers were all informative but all also underlined the lack of resources. Kevin Burke described the success of the Youth Information Centre in maintaining the core of its work, despite problems with funding, offering both a strong holiday programme over the summer and a number of specialist activities. Ruby Kelly described Moslow’s ambitions to create a living community centre with advice services, training, education and a book club. The new Shaw Street premises would open early in 2024. Inspector Bob Anderson described the police services locally as operating under severe resource constraints but nonetheless able to make some pioneering interventions in terms of youth offenders. The cuts will mean that the triaging of police interventions will have to be tighter – but stressed the range of continuing police work from mental health to life threatening household accidents. The cuts being imposed were unfortunately real and would have consequences. In discussion issues were raised about the need to press for more community space, better and cheaper bus services and the continuing problems of pavement cycling.
The meeting agreed to persevere with our two public meetings a year but to hold them at more suitable times (April and September) and to make preparations for two in the coming year despite (or perhaps because of) the likelihood of a general election in either May or October. It was felt that the first meeting might be focused on the related issues of the housing and educational needs of refugees and the lack of affordable local housing.
Newsletters should be prepared for issue in March and August-September. Our first public meeting for 2024 would be in April (probably Tuesday 16^th^) following our monthly meeting on 8 April.
d) Budget crisis for Scottish councils and urgent need for policy change on tax raising
Arising from the report from Councillor Bell at the previous meeting members discussed the statement on funding issued by COSLA the previous week and the weekend report from the Scottish Trades Union Council.
The Confederation of Local Authorities had issued a warning that existing funding plans from the Scottish government could see some councils bankrupt and others cutting essential services. Their estimate was that an additional £14.4 billion was required for existing spending to be sustained. The Scottish Trades Union Congress issued a research report which indicated an additional £1.1 billion could be raised immediately from April 2024 by using existing powers over income tax, land ownership and dwellings (Council Tax) to raise money from wealthier tax payers. Longer-run powers could be secured to tax wealth, property and aviation use to raise a further £2.6 B. However, essential also, in face of the prospective deficit, would be a change of tax policy at British level to ensure a tax system more closely matching most other European tax regimes which actively sought to enhance income redistribution to pay for basic services.
Arising from this report it was AGREED to write to the Scottish government asking that they adopt the STUC proposals, short and longer-term, and also to the Westminster government calling for redistributive taxes of the kind in force elsewhere in Europe. There was hope that the proposals outlined the previous meeting by Councillor Bell for use of the Strathclyde Pension Fund surplus could ease the deficit for the immediate future – but it was also noted that any reduction in UK interest rates would automatically reduce the size of the pension fund surplus.
e) Housing and Rents in Central Govan
JF had again contacted George Lavery of Living Rent and sought a representative. No one appeared for the December meeting. He would again seek to do so for the February meeting.
- CHAIR’S REPORT
Proposed closure of the Bank of Scotland’s Govan branch
Our Chair reported that he had no completed the collation of evidence against closure and would be sending it in to the bank’s enquiry process. Key issues were: the bank’s underestimation of the existing local population and failure to include the population resulting from current completed or near completed housing developments, the apparent under-estimation of existing bank usage, the failure to correctly estimate the cost of travel to other bank branches and the highly misleading information on alternative cash machines in Govan. Gordon MacKay was supplying material on some of these issues. Alastair Shaw, on behalf of Chris Stephens MP, said the petition had secured 1,000 signatures and would be presented within the next ten days along with that from Tea in the Pot.
- SECRETARY’S REPORT
Our Secretary reported on the meeting of the Area Committee – mainly concerned with thee allocation of grants to local community organisations. She noted the contrast to the process when she last attended when Cllr John Kane was chairing ten years ago. Then very significant grants were agreed. On this occasion only very minor amounts were available and some worthy causes got nothing.
On the previous issue of cycling Gordon Mackay noted the importance of cyclists wearing clothing that had them strongly visible at night.
- TREASURER’S REPORT
Reinhild reported that she was preparing our accounts for audit and hoped to ensure that they were sent to the City Council before the deadline of 31 December. Money Matters would by asked to validate.
- COUNCILLOR’S REPORTS
Councillor Dornan
Stephen focused mainly on transport and the report from the SPTE on bus franchising and the councils’ control of bus routes which, he argued, gave greater tactical control over the private bus companies. It was AGREED to invite Bruce Kiloh, SPTE head of transport planning, to a future meeting. There was also some discussion of the over-run in the introduction of new trains on the Subway – not now expected till well into 2024 – and of the further postponement of the opening of the Elderpark Library on account of the discovery of asbestos in the 48^th^ month of its closure for structural redevelopment. Hannah noted the consequences for local people, especially for smaller children who will never have had the opportunity to visit a library in their early years. Councillor Dornan was thanked for his report.
Alastair Campbell, agent for Chris Stephens MP
Alastair noted that the greater part of their work consisted of asylum cases (now intensified by government policy to expedite refugee status – with the resulting loss of housing, currently provided by Mears). This meant that Chris’s had remit effectively expanded to housing provision more generally – and its acute lack locally. Mike Daily was currently heading up this work legally along with the Scottish Refugee Council. The constituency office was closed from 22 December with additional emergency arrangements.
Other elected representatives
Once month disappointment was expressed at the lack on any attendance or involvement by our local MSP.
- OTHER BUSINESS
Hannah reported on the need for a forum for a ‘tenants’ review’ of local HA policies. She also noted the loss of two local officers, Yvonne Reilly and Susan Burn, who had both served Govan well.
- NEXT MEETING MONDAY 5 FEBRUARY at 7 p.m. ELDERPARK WORKSPACE