First meeting of Skye Committee

The first meeting of The Highland Council’s new Skye Committee was held in public on Monday, 29 February 2016 at the Council Chamber Tigh na Sgire, Park Lane Portree.

Committee members are Cllr Hamish Fraser, Cllr John Gordon, Cllr Drew Millar and Cllr Ian Renwick.

Cllr Drew Millar was duly elected Chair of the Committee.

The new Scheme of Delegation re-organises former powers and includes new powers for all Local Committees. The new powers include:

• Establishing appropriate links between the Committee and local community planning partnerships.
• Taking forward the localism action plan in the locality.
• Agreeing local community engagement approaches.
• Ensuring productive working relationships with Community Councils, and
• Using participatory budgeting for any funds decided by the Local Committee.

Future powers for local committees from April 2016 to be considered include local devolved decision making on parts of the Community Services budget, including roads maintenance, winter maintenance, environmental services and street cleansing.

Members agreed that future Skye Committee meetings would not be webcast.

The committee discussed the Police Area Performance, and local Housing Performance and approved the Main Issues Report for the West Highlands and Islands Development Plan.

Chair of the new Committee, Cllr Drew Millar said: “I am delighted to be appointed as Chair of the new  Area committee. Members are looking forward to really scrutinising services at a local level in public as the Council looks at how service can be delivered in the future while facing huge cuts to its finances. Also as we look to expanding our Community Planning Partnership we will be consulting with Communities through their Community Councils representatives and other Agencies as to their aspirations and expectations.”