Letters / Lack of clarity
Mike Mackenzie may wish to calmly re-read my response to his original letter and in doing so realise that I haven’t blamed anyone, as he suggests in his latest letter (Let’s work together; SN, 06/06/14). What I have done is set out the facts and name my sources.
In challenging the figures I gave for the potential additional income from council tax he demonstrates why it was so important that he spoke to me before launching his attack in the local media.
While on the face of it, new houses built in the price-range £106,000 – £212,000 would generate the income the MSP claims, what he forgets is that there hasn’t been a council tax re-valuation since 1991. Thereby, when that new house is valued for council tax it has to be backdated to 1991 values.
When this is done, then rather than being Band G as he suggests, it would probably be more like Band A to Band D. Hence the £2.3m income figure that I quoted. (Page 3 of this Scottish Government publication explains)
I’m very optimistic about the prospects for Shetland’s economy but my point was that this doesn’t automatically translate into hard cash for council services. A view supported by Audit Scotland who published this report last week.
While I used social care as an example of where it would be difficult to make alternative savings to those proposed for education, I might just as easily have cited ferries, transport, management or support services where significant savings have already been made.
There’s no magic place that we can pull money from that nobody will notice. We’ve already saved £1.5m per year on management, shed over 600 full-time posts from the organisation and have the lowest spend on support services in Scotland.
I’d also welcome the opportunity to go over these issues in person, given the lack of clarity displayed by Mr Mackenzie on many of them. That is, of course, if he’s keen to avoid any more public feather ruffling.
I stand by my figures, there’s no embarrassment on my part.
Gary Robinson
17 Burnside
Lerwick
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