Agenda and minutes

Note meeting procedure (copy of extract from the Scottish Borders Council Petitions Procedure attached)

There had been circulated copies of an extract from the Scottish Borders Council Petitions Procedure which set out the process to be followed at the meeting.

DECISION

NOTED.

2.1       The Chairman welcomed the Principal Petitioner, Mr Brian McCrow, to the meeting and asked for a round of introductions from Members of the Committee and officers.  There had been circulated copies of a petition entitled The Great Tapestry of Scotland building. There had also been circulated copies of a Briefing Note by the Corporate Transformation and Services Director accompanied by relevant reports to Council of 29 May 2014 and 18 December 2014 and minutes of those meetings.  The petition, which contained in excess of 4,000 signatures, stated “We believe that the decision made by Scottish Borders Council to fund a building in Tweedbank to house the Great Tapestry of Scotland is an unacceptable use of our Council budget at a time when essential services are being cut.  As residents and tax payers of Scottish Borders Council, we therefore request our elected members to overturn the decision to spend £3.5m in this manner”.  A file containing all the signatures and names making up the petition was available to view at the meeting.  Although this petition had been delivered to the Council by Mr McCrow on 2 March of this year Mr McCrow had been advised that it was not in the correct format, under the terms of the Council’s Petitions Procedure and was invited to resubmit.  The Chairman confirmed that the petition currently before the Committee had been received on 17 September 2015 and had been correctly compiled and submitted.

2.2.      On the invitation of the Chairman, Mr McCrow addressed the Committee.  He explained that at the beginning of February 2015 he had been compelled to raise a petition in response to the Council’s proposal to allocate £3.5m to support the construction of a building at Tweedbank to house the Great Tapestry of Scotland.  The majority of signatures, which included names from an online petition through Change.org, had been obtained over a 4-week period.  A sample of comments from the on-line petition had also been included with the papers circulated.  Mr McCrow said that he supported the Tapestry coming to the Borders but was against the Council spending this amount of money on the new building and that this was a poor use of public funds.  He believed that although Scottish Borders Council was usually responsive to the needs of the local community in this case the decision appeared to have by-passed the community and the Council had not responded to views being expressed through the media. Mr McCrow criticised the feasibility study, alleging that there had been no serious investigation of alternative and cheaper sites; no polling of prospective visitors; the design of the signature building would cost twice the square footage cost of, say, the Abbotsford visitor centre; and that the risk of the project was seen to be too high versus the poor level of anticipated profits in the longer term.  He criticised the choice of location between a housing area and industrial space, emphasising that there was a lack of parking space; inadequate stopping area for  ...  view the full minutes text for item 2.

There had been circulated copies of a petition, submitted to the Council on 19 August 2015, entitled “120 Bus Petition”.  As there was no-one in attendance to present the petition this was deferred to a future meeting.

DECISION

AGREED to defer consideration of the 120 bus service petition to a future meeting.