West Ardnamurchan Community Council, the cheerful and effective democratic institution which serves this beautiful area, held its monthly meeting last night. Eight councillors attended, two from Glenborrodale, and they conducted a huge amount of business in just under an hour.
Amongst other items, discussion ranged from the Playpark (which has now raised an incredible £35,000), to the Community Garden, the Kilmory phone box (this is a permanent fixture on the agenda, lest we forget it), the Corran ferry and the fun we're all going to have when they start work on the Corran side slipway in October, improvements to the B8007, and the need for people to complain about the continuing failures of NHS24.
Two items seemed to the Diary to be particularly important. We are heavily dependent on the Calmac ferry service to Tobermory. Therefore, we need to be involved in the Scottish Government's current national review of ferry services, particularly as the decisions made as a result of it will control ferry provision through until 2025. The Western Isles have just secured funding for a continuation of the Road Equivalent Tariff, which has hugely reduced the cost of services and increased tourist numbers, yet it will not apply to us. The Community Council is urging everyone to complete a questionnaire which is part of the public consultation process. It can be completed online, here.
The second item related to Community First Responders. We have been assured again that there is no danger that they will replace the current cover by our local GPs and District Nurses - they are there to offer a quick reaction to an emergency situation, to hold the fort until expert help arrives. Nine have now been trained, amongst other things, in the use of the defibrillator, and they seem impressed with the quality of their training. They now await the arrival of pagers, equipment and, possibly, a vehicle, before they are deployed.
Anyone experiencing a medical emergency will continue to do exactly what we have always done - phone 999. What we may now find is that the first help will arrive even more quickly - in the form of one of our First Responders. There's more about the Scottish service here.
Just completed the online survey for the ferry consultation - quite a hefty piece but really makes you think about the provision of services. As my mind wandered about half-way through the survey (easy to do with my mind) I remembered this little ditty:
ReplyDeleteThe Earth belongs unto the Lord
And all that it contains
Except the Kyles and the Western Isles
And they are all MacBrayne's
Keep up the good work Jon
Chris G
Hi Chris -
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment.
Yes, I agree, it's a bit of a beast. The Government seems to be trying to gather data from those who are very well informed and who have time to read all the documentation, to the disadvantage of those who have less time and expertise in the area. It seems to me that the only way to deal with it is only to answer those questions which are straightforward and directly relevant to our situation.
Jon
Hi John
ReplyDeletei enjoy reading your posts could you enlighten me to the corran ferry situation as i will be traveling november
regards
chrisw
We're facing similar challenges with our ferry service in Orkney. We were also expected to agree to £1m cuts in the next financial year - then it was announced that the RET was being extended in the Western Isles, which caused a huge row, and our cuts have been deferred for a year at least. But the ferry review is crucial to all communities that depend on a boat service and I join with you in encouraging everyone to respond!
ReplyDeleteAs to First Responders - our island community benefited from this scheme, but there are mixed feelings on the Orkney Mainland - largely because it seems there is only one ambulance for Mainland which has a huge range to cover and the use of First Responders fudges the attendance time so it meets "targets". Hard times ahead for all rural communities fighting to keep an adequate level of public and health service!
Chris - Your comment has prompted me to describe what I know about the arrangements at Corran in today's post. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteSian - Very interested to read your comments about your local First Responders. It has taken us a long time to reach this point as we have been - perhaps unjustifiably - suspicious of the motives behind the idea, fearing that it was a means to remove or reduce our current out-of-hours cover, which is provided by our GPs and District Nurses. So we are beginning to see our First Responders as icing on the cake.
For anyone else reading this, Sian runs a super blog about life on Graemsay, Orkney, link in the right hand column of the Diary.