Page 2 - Proposed Sale of Town Hall
You will need Acrobat Reader to open the .pdf documents. Download a copy (free
of charge) by clicking on the Adobe button
www.kinross.cc Home Page
Case Concludes - March 2008 - Read Report (.pdf)
November 2007 Summary and Update
There has been some progress in the court case, but Kinross Community
Council’s representatives continue to be frustrated by lengthy delays
in responses from Perth & Kinross Council (P&KC).
Those who have been following this matter may remember that the court
case was ‘sisted’, or suspended, for much of 2006 while the
two sides jointly engaged a QC to give an opinion on certain points of
law. A significant point was the QC’s view that the Library was
indeed part of the ‘common good’. When it first petitioned
the Sheriff for permission to sell the buildings, P&KC had disputed
this and wanted keep any money gained from selling the library building
rather than putting it into the Kinross Common Good Fund. Both sides had
agreed to be bound by the QC’s opinion, which was obtained in August
2006. It took P&KC until December 2006 to have its acceptance of the
QC’s opinion formalised by various Council committees. P&KC
then needed to revise its petition to the Sheriff Court.
Frustrated with waiting for P&KC’s revised pleadings, in April
2007 the CC requested that the sist be lifted, and the case was once again
‘live’ in the Sheriff Court system. By this time P&KC
had appointed a legal team from outwith the Council to deal with the case
on its behalf.
There have been more delays this year. P&KC’s legal team requested
that the case be postponed until financial close was reached on the Investment
in Learning Project, which will provide a new community school for Kinross-shire.
Financial close was reached in October. In anticipation of this, they
sent a further revision of their petition to the CC’s solicitor
on 25 September. The revised petition relies heavily on the argument that
the new community school will replace all the facilities lost by the disposal
of the Town Hall and Carnegie Library.
Under the 1973 Local Government (Scotland) Act, a Sheriff has the power
to allow a local authority to alienate buildings which otherwise might
have been regarded as inalienable. This means a local authority can sell
or otherwise dispose of common good land or buildings at the discretion
of the Sheriff. If the Sheriff does allow disposal, he may impose a condition
requiring the local authority to provide a substitute for the common good
property. The substitute should be used for the same purpose for which
the former common good property was used. Now that the new school project
has been officially confirmed, it can be claimed that it will provide
community facilities which will substitute for the Town Hall and Library.
In order to clarify how suitable a replacement it will be, CC representatives
drew up a list of questions about the new school and its management contract.
This list was sent to P&KC in mid October but at the time of writing
(mid November) P&KC have still not supplied the answers. The CC cannot
properly respond to the latest version of P&KC’s petition until
this information is received.
The Sheriff has now set a date for a Hearing. This will be in February
2008.
The CC’s representatives apologise to the local community for the
inordinate length of time the court case is taking, and for the continued
eyesore the buildings present in the meantime, but hope this article goes
some way to explaining why it is taking so long.
December
2007
Those interested in the topic of Common Good may wish to visit the following
website:
http://www.scottishcommons.org
Andy Wightman, author and researcher on land use, has written a Quick
Guide to Common Good which can be downloaded from that website.
Update
- 7 May 2007
On
25 April 2007, the solicitor acting on behalf of the Community Council
took the case back to Perth Sheriff Court and asked for a date to be set
for a hearing before the Sheriff. This was granted and a hearing date
has now been set for 26 June 2007.
Before this hearing, it is hoped that the Sheriff will appoint a Reporter
to investigate some of the following:
• Whether the subjects are alienable (can be sold)
• Whether there are any other reasonably practicable alternative
uses for the buildings which would benefit the local population
• Whether discretion should be exercised by the Sheriff to sell,
and if so, what conditions (if any) should be attached to the permission
to sell
• What order should be made in relation to the net free proceeds
of sale of the subjects
Kinross Community Council is doing its best to ensure a speedy resolution to the dilapidation of the Town Hall and Library, however there have been major delays caused primarily by changes of staff within Perth and Kinross Council and the committee processes which P&KC had to go through to indicate its acceptance that the Library is part of the Common Good of Kinross.
We are sorry
that the dilapidated state of the Town Hall and Library is causing such
an eyesore to residents at this time, and would also like to take this
opportunity to apologise for any bad impact on visitors. However, we -
along with 2,400 people who signed our petition - feel that the Town Hall
and Library should be put back into a reasonable state by the council,
as this what they are legally obliged to do (in our opinion).
Update - February 2007
Following receipt of the QC’s opinion, fresh decisions relating
to the court case were made at some P&KC Committees.
In November 2006 the Executive sub
committee of the Strategic Policy &Resources Committee (SP&RC)
resolved “That in relation to the court action regarding
Kinross Town Hall and the Kinross Carnegie Free Library, the whole of
the property be conceded to be part of the common good fund, and that
the whole proceeds should be paid into the Kinross Common Good Fund without
any deductions for historic maintenance costs.”
On 20 December 2006 the Kinross Common Good Fund
Committee (KCGFC) was reconvened for the first time in many years.
The remit of Common Good Fund Committees is to:
** determine all matters involving the disbursement of Common Good Fund
monies
**determine all matters relating to property or land or other assets held
by the Common Good Funds.
As there is only £596.12 in the fund there have been no surpluses
worth disbursing to good causes in recent years. It would seem, however,
that someone had remembered the second part of the remit. The Committee
consisted of Local Councillors George Hayton (Kinross Town) and Willie
Robertson (Milnathort and North Kinross), plus Jimmy Doig and Willie Wilson
(Convener and Vice-Convener of the SP&RC). At the time of its meeting,
we did not know exactly what the Common Good Fund Committee was being
asked to decide, as Council officers recommended that a report to the
committee (by the Head of Property) should be excluded from the public
and press under Schedule 7A of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973.
However, we thought the Common Good Fund Committee was probably being
asked to approve the earlier decision of the SP&RC taken in February
2002 to sell the buildings.
We applied to send a deputation to the Common Good Fund Committee. This
was permitted and Eileen Thomas addressed the Committee and answered questions
for ten minutes. We urged the Committee to reconsider the Council’s
decision to sell. We reminded them that 2,400 of their local constituents
had signed a petition stating their belief that the Town Hall and Library
buildings were gifted to the local people and that the local authority
had an obligation to restore and maintain them. We also argued that a
compromise solution, whereby perhaps part of the buildings could be converted
to commercial use (office or retail) whilst restoring the Town Hall for
community use would be more beneficial to the town than converting all
of the buildings to flats, which is the use they will be put to if the
deal the Council hopes to conclude goes ahead. We had also submitted a
six-page letter detailing these and many other points. (Click
here to see the letter). The Committee’s discussion took place
in private. It seems our pleas were not successful: the Committee agreed
to homologate (or ratify) the decision made by the SP&R Committee
in 2002 to sell the buildings. We now also know that the KCGFC has also
agreed that any maintenance costs as from 20 December 2006 should come
from the Common Good Fund. We know this because we requested the committee
report under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act. It was obtained
on 1st Feb 2007. Although it was slightly “redacted” to remove
commercially sensitive information, we were correct in our assumption
that the Committee was being asked to homologate the 2002 decision to
sell the Town Hall and Library.
Click here to see
the redacted version of the committee report.
The Next Step:
Although the Council’s new resolution (to put all proceeds into
the Common Good Fund) is an improvement on the original petition, we still
believe this is a woeful under-valuing of the buildings, due to years
of neglect by the Council.
We expect P&KC to follow up their committee decisions with an amended
petition to the Sheriff Court and for the case to resume. We will continue
to oppose the sale of the buildings.