A former Kinross-shire councillor has claimed an initiative which funds community projects has been “hijacked” by council officials.
Dave Cuthbert, who served on the council as an independent, says the “action partnership” in his area has failed to live up to his, and the community’s, expectations.
Action partnerships were set up in five areas across Perth and Kinross in places where people experience higher levels of inequality. Money was then distributed through “participatory budgeting” where local people decided how funds should be allocated.
Mr Cuthbert said he was delighted when he helped get an additional £200,000 for the scheme which required to be spent by April next year but had become disillusioned about how the initiative had progressed.
He said councillors had been promised that by October 2017 the action partnerships would be community-led with a community representative chairing them, minutes would be widely publicised, meetings would be public and wide public consultation would be carried out to identify key areas for action.
Mr Cuthbert said that the current position with the Kinross-shire Almond and Earn Action Partnership sees it chaired by a council officer, no elections for community representatives had been held, meetings are in private and no public consultation that he was aware of, had been carried out.
“I am saddened by this for a number of reasons,” he said.
“The whole point about the action partnerships being community-led is that communities already understand themselves.”
A council spokesperson defended its record saying: “Currently the partnership is chaired by a senior council officer, but it is still the aspiration for all the action partnerships to be chaired by a community representative, and that there will be an open process for community representatives to be nominated onto the partnership.
“This is taking longer than originally anticipated to put in place, however all five action partnerships have achieved a great deal in a relatively short space of time, such as distributing £103,000 to 96 community projects across Perth and Kinross, through participatory budgeting, with 6,800 votes cast for local projects by members of the public.
“They have also developed local action plans, which identify local inequality issues and the initial actions to be taken to address these.”
