Due to full Summer diaries we have been forced to cancel the public Community Council meeting on 3 August.
We have rescheduled the meeting for Wed 7 September. It will be a public meeting and all are welcome.
The Agenda will be posted shortly. Thanks for your understanding!
Following a meeting with Cllr Roddy McCuish and Jim Smith from Argyll and Bute Council, we can confirm that the bin uplifts will be changing around mid August.
From mid August:
Holiday home owners will be offered the option to pay for an addition uplift at commercial rates.
Argyll & Bute Council will be in touch with all residents in due course. At the moment, though we are keen to get feedback and thoughts from residents and holiday home or second home owners – and we will pass these on to Cllr McCuish.
Please comment using the form below, or on Facebook or by speaking to a Community Councillor.
Argyll & Bute are currently running a survey related to the opening times of public libraries, including ours on Tiree.
All residents and regular users are encouraged to participate in the survey which closes on Friday 5th July.
The next public meeting of the Tiree Community Council will be on Wednesday the 3rd of August. 7.30pm at An Talla. All welcome.
There will be NO meeting in July.
Tiree Community Council is proposing to try to “adopt” the majority of telephone boxes in Tiree.
Why?
What do we intend to do with them?
Other proposals include:
Pros
Cons
The telephones would be removed by BT. It is likely, however, that these boxes will be decommissioned anyway over time.
Fundraising would be required for defibrillators and SOS phones if we wish to go down that route for some of the boxes.
Next steps
The public meeting thought that this was a good thing to explore further. No decisions have yet been made.
However, we have been in touch with BT and applied to be considered. All 10 phone boxes we are interested in now have a notice advising people of a 42 day consultation period. There are details on the poster of how to object.
Heanish was not included as it is regularly used.
Cornaig was originally included, but after an objection we have withdrawn that application.
The 42 consultation period is part of a wider 90 day Council consultation period. Once that is over Rhoda will report back to the public meeting and we can figure what if any next steps will be taken.
Notes:
http://www.communityheartbeat.org.uk/
http://www.coatings.org.uk/adopt-a-telephone-kiosk.aspx
https://business.bt.com/solutions/small-business/communities/adopt-a-kiosk/
Tiree phone boxes under consideration
It was recently suggested that we write to the Royal Bank of Scotland in relation to the reduced branch opening hours which will begin later in the summer. It was noted that the letter received by customers mentioned an ATM. We thought it would be a good opportunity to see if one might be installed. There are no promises, but the initial communication has been positive.
Dear Mr Crawford,
Thank you for your recent letter advising RBS customers on Tiree of reduced hours of opening at the above branch. The matter was discussed at last evenings Tiree Community Council meeting, following representations by RBS customers to Tiree Community Council.
In particular, RBS customers are puzzled to learn from your recent letter that, “cash machine availability will remain the same”. As the Scarinish branch does not currently have a cash dispensing machine, there will be no obvious advantage to RBS Scarinish customers. May we suggest that RBS investigates the installation of a cash dispensing machine, which would in fact go a long way toward balancing the additional days that the branch will be closed. This simple act of providing a cash machine would put Tiree on a level playing field with larger, (and not so large), city branches, and all at minimal cost to RBS. I might add that currently, non RBS customers are turned away from the Tiree branch as it is only RBS customers who can receive card based cash.
I do hope that you might seriously consider the above proposal as overcoming some of the obvious reputational damage to your company when visitor numbers on Tiree swell to over 2,500 during the summer months, many of these will of course be existing RBS customers, with an expectation that they can withdraw cash at any time.
Please do not hesitate to contact me should I be able to provide any further information to you.
Best regards,
Ian
Ian Gillies,
Secretary,
Tiree Community Council.
And the response:
Mr Gillies
Many thanks for the email and for taking the time to reply to the letter that I had sent and also for discussing the hours change at your recent Council Meeting. I have also copied Craig Smith from the branch into my response so he is aware of our communications.
Firstly let me apologies for the wording of the letter around the cash line. Upon reading the wording back it could’ve been either removed or worded in a different way as you are quite correct that there is no current ATM facility.
The subject of the cash machine came up on my last visit to the Island and after discussions with the Tiree Music Festival organisers and it is something that we investigated last year. At that point we had decided that the current set up of full time branch hours and a mobile cash machine visiting the festival was discussed and we felt this was the correct way forward. Now with the branch hours changing that may lead us to a different conclusion. I have today went away and requested a business case to be looked at within the company for the feasibility of a ATM machine to be installed in the branch. What I would say though is there wont be a quick answer but I will start the communications within the bank to see what can be done.
I will work with Craig to get all the supporting information including local events and visitor numbers to help the case.
While I cant promise it will be successful I can promise that I will try and get a successful outcome for you and the community.
Thanks
Gary
Gary Crawford | Local Chief Executive Officer
We were recently approached by two members of the community to speak to CalMac about the policy of cancelling sailings up to 24 hours in advance. There was concern that these cancellations are made without allowing for the fact that weather may improve. The correspondence is below.
Dear Sirs,
I am writing on behalf of the Tiree Community Council regarding concerns raised by members of the community, and brought to us at our last meeting on Wed 4 May.The ferry to Tiree on Wed 4 May was cancelled the day prior to sailing due to adverse weather conditions.
The community members felt that the weather on the day was no worse than many a time the ferry sailed, and indeed docked, during the winter.
Whilst we are certainly not in the business of second guessing operational or skipper led decisions on the basis of safety, we, as a community, and as an elected Community Council would be interested in receiving a copy of the criteria used to judge that a sailing should be cancelled the day prior to sailing.
In the past, it was rare for a ferry to be cancelled the day before. We are well used to the amber warning system, and regard ferries cancelled due to weather to be part of island life.
However, there appears to have been an emerging pattern over the last year of ferries being cancelled the day before. This doesn’t allow for the possibility of the forecasted weather improving, nor does it take into account weather improving later in the day. With a dedicated boat for Tiree now available, it does not seem outwith the realms of possibility that a ferry could be delayed until weather improves. The weather on Wednesday evening for example, was a vast improvement on that which was present in the morning.
Would you be willing to provide us with a copy of the criteria for such early cancellation? Furthermore, are you able to tell us whether there has been a change in policy which has resulted in early cancellations becoming normal practice?
We do appreciate your time, and thank you in anticipation of a response
Yours faithfully,
Rhoda Meek
Tiree Community Councillor
And the response:
Dear Rhoda
Thank you for your email regarding what your Community Council regard as an increase in forward cancellations over the past year.
Although we do not have a written protocol on this which we can send you, as it is up to the judgement of each individual Master, you would be right in saying this type of bad weather management is becoming increasingly used to improve the public’s experience of travelling with us.
With improvements in weather forecasting and our ability to make decisions based on best possible information, our Masters are now able to make better evidence based decisions on the likelihood of a vessel sailing or not the following day.
Our Masters will always appraise the various weather forecasts in advance and where conditions are marginal they may well attempt the passage, however, where the weather forecast is significant they will consider cancelling sailings earlier.
The feedback we have from customer focus groups consistently says passengers prefer to know for certain whether a vessel will sail or not, with as much forward warning as possible. Then at least alternative arrangements can be made if a sailing is to be cancelled.
That is why you have seen an increase in sailings being cancelled 24 hours in advance. These cancellations are made on the best possible information available but you will appreciate that no system of weather forecasting is 100% accurate. There may be odd occasions when a sailing is cancelled in advance of a weather warning and the conditions are then not as severe as forecast.
We appreciate this may cause frustration for people who have had to change their plans, but our customer intelligence tells us this is the least worst option in the event of possible disruption of service.
Having up to date accurate passenger information is one of the key areas we get the most feedback on and we have taken major steps forward in improving this recently. A clear focus on getting information out through social and other media along with the introduction of an extra ‘traffic light’ in our disruption warning system now allow passengers to make travel decisions based on the best possible information.
The introduction of more planned cancellations is part of this move towards a more consistent approach to cancellations.
No system relying on weather forecasts can be foolproof, but we are trying to give us much certainty to our customers as possible.
I hope this answers your query but please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you would like to find out more.
Regards
MartinMartin Dorchester
Chief Executive
CalMac Ferries Ltd
The Tiree Community Council met on the 1st of June in An Talla. The first part of the evening was made up of the AGM. The chair ran through a list of the areas where progress had been made: securing two flights a day all year round; a summer double ferry sailing on Saturday and taking our place on the Argyll Ferry Users’ Group; lobbying to keep the laying of the fibre-optic broadband cable to the island on programme; putting the Tiree case for the upcoming Islands Bill; and fighting for the library service and the Crossapol office in the face of Council cuts. We have had less success convincing the roads department that the island’s roads were in need of significant investment, and moving some derelict vehicles. The Treasurer reported that we had £1,826 in the bank, much of that a Windfall Fund grant of £1,000 which we have not had to call upon this past year. Angus John MacKechnie, Frazer MacInnes and Alison Kennedy had resigned as Councillors during the year, while Iona Campbell, Paul Le Roux and Rhoda Meek had been co-opted in their place until the next elections in November. We had a new website, Facebook page and Twitter feed, and had met in public eleven months of the year. Dr Holliday was re-elected Convenor, Ian Gillies took on the post of Secretary and Rosemary Omand was re-elected Treasurer.
We then went on to a Business meeting. We had asked for the holiday closure of the Council Service Point office in Crossapol to be advertised in advance, as far as was possible. The management had agreed to this in principle. We had met with the Tiree Trust and it had been agreed to set up a monthly litter tidy, township by township. We agreed this should be called Sgudal. We discussed changes to the Pre-5 schooling, where Gaelic-medium was being re-placed with a bi-lingual programme after a consultation with the parents. This would be looked into by the Parent-Teacher Council. Tiree Community Council has a proposal to buy some of the rotting phone boxes on the island, restore them, and put them to community use. There is a public consultation about this at the moment, so if you have any ideas or objections, do get in touch with us. The Community Council and the Trust were looking into setting up a Chapel of Rest in an unused building near the airport. We agreed to set up a group of interested people to oversee the Tiree flag project, and we had been asked to commission a Tiree tartan at the same time. If anyone is interested in joining this group, please let me know. We agreed to write to the committee who had run A’ Bhuain, thanking them for the wonderful week they had organised. We had had an estimate from Stokes Memorials to refurbish Dr Buchanan’s monument in Baugh, and we will consult on this. We had been approached by the estate to join a group of island organisations to develop policies about sand extraction from the beaches and beach access. We agreed to write to the new factor, welcoming a meeting. We had been approached by a resident of the new houses at Pier View, who told us how expensive the houses were to heat. We agreed to write to West Highland Housing Association to hear what could be done about this. We hope to visit the Orkney island of Westray in September to see how other, similar, islands are managing. The meeting lasted over two and a half hours, for which apologies!
We gave a lunch for Alison Kennedy, who is leaving Tiree, to thank her for years of hard work at the Secretary’s coalface. We are really missing her! Dr John Holliday, Rosemary Omand, Ian Gillies, Rhoda Meek and Paul Le Roux were in attendance. John MacCaskill sent his apologies. The Council has no meeting in July due to the busy summer schedule, so we meet again in August. However, the behind-the-scenes work will go on, and if you have any issues you would like to bring up, do get in touch.