People in Coupar Angus will have to travel to Perth or Blairgowrie to register births, marriages and deaths from next year, under proposals to be discussed this week.
Although there is no dedicated office in the town, locals can currently register at a local firm of solicitors, which is paid £3300 per year by the council to provide the service.
A plan to be discussed by Perth and Kinross Council’s scrutiny committee would end this from January 1, as the council seeks to improve its recording accuracy rating and save that cash. Under the proposal, the council-run Blairgowrie registration office, or the ones in Dundee or Perth, would be used instead. Around 150 registrations a year would be affected.
A paper to be considered by the committee suggests options for keeping the service in Coupar Angus were ultimately unfeasible.
It states: ”It is recognised that the current provider is delivering a local service to the Coupar Angus community. In order to try to maintain that local service, the local library was considered as an alternative to the solicitor-based provider.
“However, it is not possible to provide a private room to register events and there would be restrictions as a result of library opening times.
”The option of a manual appointment service in the Coupar Angus Town Hall itself has also been considered. However, the only room suitable with disabled access is the ante-room located at the back of the main hall. This room is only accessible through the main hall and therefore appointments could only be made when there are no bookings for the main hall.
”Block bookings throughout the year are taken up by local organisations and availability is sporadic. With bookings requiring two weeks’ notice in advance, this presents us with further difficulty, as the timing of customers requiring our service cannot be determined in advance.”
It goes on to explain why Blairgowrie is seen as the best alternative.
”Improved service delivery could be achieved if the current registration service was delivered from the Blairgowrie registration office. The Blairgowrie office is a computerised office with an excellent accuracy rate and could provide customers with an enhanced service.
”Efficiency savings could also be made from the removal of the annual fee paid to the agency, as well as the necessity for register pages to be sent to the Perth office for inputting into the National Records of Scotland database.”
The move would also allow access to the government’s streamlined Tell Us Once system, through which all services can become aware of a change in circumstances through a single phone call.
Other than Coupar Angus and the home-based registrar in Kinloch Rannoch, all other registration offices in Perth and Kinross already use it.
The paper states: ”The delivery of the service from the Blairgowrie office would enable the registration service to provide the Coupar Angus community with the same enhanced, accurate and professional service as the majority of customers across Perth and Kinross.”
It goes on: ”It is anticipated that not all registrations from the Coupar Angus area would be carried out at the Blairgowrie office. It is anticipated that customers who work in Perth or Dundee would be likely to opt to visit the main registration offices in these cities, with around two-thirds of the total registrations choosing to visit the Blairgowrie office.
”This would increase the number of registrations at the Blairgowrie office by approximately one per week.”