Brian Whittle MSP says South Ayrshire Council needs to clean up its act after it was revealed the Council’s Chief Executive Eileen Howat and Leader, Douglas Campbell, published a budget consultation which included proposals they had no intention of taking up. The plan, revealed in e-mails obtained through a freedom of information request showed that controversial proposals to cut the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award programme and close the Dolphin House at Culzean were left in the consultation so Council bosses and the administration could later get positive publicity for “saving” the facilities.
Now, South Scotland MSP Brian, who had previously suggested the consultation had been engineered for PR purposes, says senior figures need to take responsibility and apologise for misleading the public about their budget plans.
Criticising the leadership of the current administration Brian Whittle MSP said:
“This consultation was supposed to be about giving the public in South Ayrshire a chance to make a meaningful contribution to the budget process. Instead, it appears that the Council’s leadership used the consultation as an opportunity for some PR enhancing smoke and mirrors.
Every council administration has a responsibility to treat their employees and the public with respect. I don’t see how South Ayrshire can claim they’ve met that standard while suggesting cuts they knew they wouldn’t ever make, just to claim praise later and, in their own words “show how [Councillors] have listened to the people.”
It’s ridiculous for Douglas Campbell and his colleagues in the SNP Labour administration to claim the budget consultation was about transparency when it’s now clear their motives for it were anything but transparent.
Frankly, the council staff and members of the public who will have been distressed by these threatened closures are owed an apology from South Ayrshire Council.”