Kincorth/Leggart Community Council

Minutes of meeting held on 8 June 2011 at Kincorth Community Centre

Item No
1 Chair
Members were welcomed to the meeting

2 Attendance
Members
Graham Bennett Chair, Catherine Cowie Secretary, Hazel Park Treasurer, Lee Brown, Lynne Brown, Gary Mitchell, Iris Murray, Glyn Sangster, Mary Wilson, Roy Wilson, Councillors Cooney and Dean.
Others
Patricia Frazer ACC, PC Graham Smith.
3 Apologies
Maureen Downie, Alex Park, Robert Sangster.

4 Minutes of Previous Meeting
These were agreed as a correct record.

5 Business Arising
Frome the March meeting
5.1 Item 10.1
The Secretary wrote regarding the culling of the deer on Tullos Hill. No response has been received.
5.2 Item 10.5
Councillor Dean has been advised that there are no planning restrictions preventing ASDA having their delivery lorries parking on Anderson Drive. The police could only take action if the lorries are causing an obstruction. The Secretary was asked to write to Bear regarding the state of the grass verge due to lorries standing on it.
Action Secretary
April Meeting
5.3 Item 6
The Secretary has contacted the Reporter to the Childrens Panel. She has received no response so will contact the Reporter again.
Action Secretary
5.4 Item 7.2
The double yellow lines have now been painted at the Cairngorm Roundabout. Graham Bennett informed members that the Zebra Crossing on Provost Watt Drive was in serious need of repainting and asked the City Councillors to progress this.
Action Councillor Cooney
5.5 Item 8
The auditor’s address has been given to the City Council.
5.6 Gazebos
The gazebos are still in acceptable storage.
5.7 Lynne Brown has not yet been able to obtain details of the KRAS bank account. The person who can access this has now returned to work and Lynne will follow this up.
Action Lynne Brown
5.8 Local Licensing forum
Glyn Sangster did not manage to attend this meeting.
5.9 Aberdeen Green space
Information on upgrading of parks is available on the city council website. It was agreed that this department should be contacted regarding the re-fit of the play parks. City Council employees can give advice on grants that may be available for this. This item has been discussed at three previous meetings and the need to progress some action was raised. A meeting will be arranged with Ian Esslemont to determine who can carry out the work needed with our council providing £750 funding that is available. The Academy should also be contacted to enquire whether the technical department would be able to make any items for the park if material is provided.
Action Secretary and Treasurer
6 Police Report
Travellers have returned to our area again. The landowner has refused to allow them to leave his land until they have paid for the use of it.
Fire raising on the Gramps is causing concern with the number of incidents recently. An 18 year old has been questioned in relation to this.
Other incidents in the area included vandalism, drugs use and supply, motor cycle nuisance and motor vehicle offences.
A new police operation will concentrate on drugs, under age drinking and public nuisance.
A question was asked regarding the provision of a shelter for youths in the Torry area of the City and why this area is favoured when the provision of a shelter in our area has been spoken about for several years without any success in its provision.
The problem of lorries parking on the grass verge at ASDA on Anderson Drive was brought to the attention of PC Smith. He was asked to raise this with the Sergeant who had initially contacted the manager at ASDA.

7 Correspondence
7.1 An email has been received regarding Reshaping Care for Older People in Aberdeen. None of our members is able to attend a meeting regarding this. However the opinion was expressed that the wardens provide excellent facilities in the care of the elderly.
7.2 First Bus has intimated changes to their services with minor route changes.
7.3 The Information Commissioners Office has confirmed the registration of our council.
7.4 Karen Riddoch, the Community Council Liaison Officer at the City Council has given a written explanation of the provision of our funding from the Council. Since members did not find this t be a clear explanation it was agreed that information should be returned with what we think should have happened.
Action Secretary & Roy Wilson

8 Treasurer’s Report
The Treasurer informed members of the details of income and expenditure. The current balance is £2358.49. £500 of this balance has been allocated to the play park improvements.

9 Reports

9.1 Civic Forum
The Secretary and Treasurer attended recent meeting of this group. They said that this is very much a listen and learn exercise until they pick up the threads of the business discussed.
9.2 Planning
There are no applications for any concerning developments in our area. A letter has been received regarding an earlier representation made in relation to the Local Development Plan. This will be re- examined
Action Roy Wilson
9.3 Community Council Forum

The Chairman welcomed members and introduced the invited speakers, Annette Bruton and Patricia Cassidy, to the meeting.

Mrs Bruton
Introduced the City Council budget, explained how it would affect the Community Service and what would happen to the community centres. The plan is to integrate the centres. A hand-out was provided illustrating the budget with an explanation of the share allocated to the various Council services. Admin costs have been reduced and the biggest savings have come from a reduction of staff from 140 to around 35 full time equivalent staff. Properties are also suffering from lack of maintenance and there is no money available to correct this problem,
The City Councillors decided that all community centres should move to leased centres by 2012 managed by committees with a grant from the City Council. Discussions will be held with the management committees regarding the move to lease centres. It is proposed that there be a common constitution for the centres with the committees responsible for all education courses etc. held in their centre with support from the greatly reduced council staff. The talk was followed by a question and answer session where the ladies tried to give as honest an answer as possible to the questions put to them.
Concern was expressed that the members of any management committee would not realise the legal implications they would be working under should they volunteer for the committees. One community council has decided that they will take no part in the running of the local community centre. The need for obtaining younger volunteers was also a concern since many of the present volunteers are from the elderly of the population.
Mr Finlayson thanked the ladies for coming to talk to us and they left the meeting.
Chief Executive Officer
Mr Finlayson had previously circulated a letter sent to the CEO regarding her non-attendance at forum meetings after there was apparently an agreement that she would meet with the forum. Mr Findlay has met the CEO informally and she informed him that she had no knowledge of ever being asked to attend a forum meeting. Kieran Monaghan has acknowledged in an email that this problem was entirely his fault. It was agreed the CEO should be invited to a special meeting to be held on Monday 4th July.
We will not be in the city at that time and would urge our council to ensure at least one delegate be present at this very important meeting.
Arising from the Minutes
Karen Riddoch has been looking into the current position of the City Council/Community Council Protocol. This has apparently been sitting with the CEO office. Karen is to request that this be progressed. It has been with the Council for approximately 18 months.
Treasurer
There is a balance of £1257.42. There have been some problems with the bank. However they have finally accepted the signatories to the cheques. Our fee of £15 for membership of the forum was paid.
Correspondence
A request to have a speaker on the need for Entertainment Licences has been received. An invitation will be extended to them to speak at a future meeting.
A member of the Dyce and Stoneywood C C has informed the Forum that he has been elected to the Scottish Parliament and so has resigned from the community council.
Planning Modernisation Group
In the first instance Peter Reiss was invited to address this group. Several CCF members got together and decided what should be brought before this group. Proposals were looked at by the Executive Committee and decided it could not go ahead as it was too confrontational and as it was just Aberdeen City Community Councils who were complaining it was not appropriate to proceed. Maggie Bochel stated she would be happy to meet with individual Community Councils to resolve issues.
Planning Mediation Group
It was then decided to focus efforts on the Mediation group. Members met and discussed what our expectations would be, met with the mediator to discuss the forums main priorities and an understanding of why we felt mediation was necessary.
The forum issues are -
Hope that the planning issues would be a better managed process, there would be transparency and
relationships between the Community Councils and Aberdeen City Council would be improved
Fear that ACC would state there is nothing wrong and it is simply that CCs do not understand the system and ACC have to look at City as a whole whereas CCs look to their own area
Peter Reiss was thanked for his expertise and attending these meetings on behalf of the Forum.
Recycling Centre at Hazelhead
SITA have prepared documents relating to this centre. It was suggested that the forum should offer support to the community councils involved in this. The community councils directly involved were advised that they should arrange to meet Councillor Malone before the planning application for the centre is submitted.
Frequency of Meetings
Every community council in the City is to be circulated and asked their opinion regarding how often the forum should meet.
We would suggest our council response should be that meetings continue to be held every two months as at present with additional meetings held when thought necessary.


10 A.O.C.B
10.1 Lee Brown has updated the website and will publish our minutes on it. It was suggested that there should be articles on the web showing what our council has done in the past and what we are trying to do now.
Action Lee Brown
10.2 Forms were passed round for member to complete with their contact details in order that this information could be accurate. The membership list will be updated with the information provided.
Action Roy Wilson