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Consultation over council cuts           9/1/13

Plans for job losses and savage service cuts will be aired at a series of community consultation meetings across the Western Isles.

Western Isles Council needs to find £6 million to balance its budget over the coming two years.

A final £1.1 million compensation payout for the £23 million the council lost in the 1991 collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International will ease the pain to a degree.

The consultation report says it is “minded” to slash the inter-island plane service between Stornoway and Benbecula to just three days a week.

Another council document indicates changes to the internal air service risks the “commercial viability” of connecting flights to Inverness and Glasgow. It could also affect ill patients who need the air service to get to appointments in the islands’ main hospital in Stornoway as well as medical consultants who travel to island clinics.

Following a public outcry the council is to rethink the amount of deep cuts to community minibuses which help vulnerable people in the remoter districts though it still seeks £60,000 savings.

Controversial plans to phase out itinerant teachers for PE, music and art in primary schools are still on the cards. The authority insists it is not legally required to provide the specialist teaching for these subjects.

Creating virtual classrooms and phase in E-learning via internet links over a two year period offers more subject choices to pupils in secondary schools and could save £1 million says the council.

The idea is based on a specialist teacher in one school giving lessons via a remote tele-link to pupils in other parts of the islands.

But unions warn that around 100 jobs are at risk as a result of the cuts.

Unison's Western Isles local government branch union representative Flora Somerville previously highlighted that says each council redundancy risks another person’s job in the private sector due to reduced spending in island shops and businesses.

She also stressed that freezing vacant posts mean a raft of lost earnings not circulating through the local economy.

Remaining staff face reduced conditions.

Nine consultation meetings are being spread out between the first tonight (Wed) on Barra to the end of the month.