Provost William Hendrie and then SNP councillor Iain MacLaren – the man who facilitated a £250,000 discount for a dodgy care home company to buy Langcraigs – and the other so-proud councillors who knew the background to the Pavilion deal – at the official opening of the cafe. The let-down training centre/cafe staff are also in the pictures.
NOTEBOOK by BILL HEANEY
It will be one of the most unpopular cuts in West Dunbartonshire Council’s soon to be revealed budget.
The Pavillion Cafe in Levengrove Park is being shut down to save £90,000 a year. Not only did they get the spelling wrong for this treasured community resource.
The Council got the planning wrong too. And the financial forecast was a bummer into the bargain.
They absolutely insisted on spelling the name of the Pavilion with two Ls instead of one.
And although that won’t make much of a difference, bungling the finance plan will make one L of a difference.
It means the basket case Council will have to put the key in the door of the Pavillion Cafe with two Ls.
Everyone who knew anything about Dumbarton was aware the cafe would never be a financial success.
How could it be? It could never survive the kind of winter we are having at the moment – and it hasn’t.
If only West Dunbartonshire Council’s senior managers had not bullied that disabled member staff then they might have saved the £1 million of our money that it will cost them to compensate him.
That money could have paid for unforeseen – it makes you wonder if anything is ever foreseen by this Council – expenditure such as the £90,000 they will require to keep financing the Pavilion Cafe. Or Balloch Library. Or a new Health Centre. Add £8 million to that for the library no one needs or wants at Glencairn House in the High Street.
We knew there was something wrong with the Pavilion deal from the outset. The Council were about to give it the green light when they discovered there was no tranche of cash they could within their own rules take the money from.
And so – it was the SNP who were in power at the time – they decided to delay matters to give them time tap into the money for the Health and Social Care Partnership, which is run by a committee of unelected people and chaired by an unelected Dumbarton GP. And up to its eyes in debt, of course.
In order to get their hands on the money and save their acute embarrassment, the Council designated the cafe as an adult training centre, which would employ special people and train them for work.
These special people will be devastated to learn that they will have to look for a job, as will the seven staff on contracts and dozen or so volunteers employed at the Pavilion who will require to obtain new placements. They have been duped.
The committee will be told the service was intended to provide a community café, as well as volunteering
opportunities from employability services capturing a range of service users. The cost of the service was expected to be covered by profits made from the café, however this has not been successful.
It is expected that there will be a £90,000 deficit on funding year on year, which has been covered previously by funding held in a suspense account.
However this balance has now been depleted and an overspend is the current and projected position.
It is proposed that this service be closed and there is a renewed focus on the development of more appropriate services for this client group as part of the learning disability review.
It took them a long time for that particular penny to drop. So, well done them.
If this café does not close, there will be a continued loss of income which will increase the financial burden on the HSCP and its ability to fund critical services. It is recommended that this café closes as soon as practicable.
The HSCP is yet another of those public service committees strangled by red tape which the SNP government keep coming up with, mainly to cover up what is actually happening in the health service locally. It’s a poor, poor service.
A look at their minutes for a meeting today says that a new Health Centre for Dumbarton partly financed by the levelling up fund – the same fund that paid for the boulders and multi-coloured crossing for Station Road – is just a pipe dream, no more than wishful thinking for politicians who believe our heads button up the back.
They are delighted that there is no RAAC – that dodgy concrete found in schools and other public buildings – has not been found at the health centre. That’s just as well given the situation we are now in.
We know that under the Secret Scotland culture that runs through local government in Dumbarton and elsewhere that the public were not invited to be empowered in relation to the Pavilion Cafe, so what do the paying public think of what’s happening?
The now elected Labour administration in Church Street would no doubt have loved to have re-named it the Red Rose Cafe and claimed credit for having brought it here.
The SNP’s Tartan Tearoom will be left to fall into disrepair and become a danger to children from the nearby playpark. It will be another memory in the midst of what might have been for Dumbarton.
It appears that the Friends of Levengrove Park, an inclusive, informal group of local volunteers who are passionate about the park and work in close partnership with the Council’s Greenspace Community Ranger Service and the HSCP Work Connect Specialist Supported Employment Service, heard nothing of the impending closure.
The group base their activities in the park and volunteer their time assisting with various activities including managing and maintaining the Community Orchard and the War Memorial Garden. Group members also lead with the Ranger Service on inspirational walks, assist with community events, undertake visitor surveys and in growing and harvesting fruit.
The Friends Group also arrange jam making sessions with Café staff within the Pavilion. In addition, the group apply for grant aid to help enhance the park and provide additional activities to improve the visitor experience, e.g. the Community Orchard and the Putting Green.
This is a consultative community group and they are regularly consulted by the Council on park developments. Like so much else in Dumbarton, this does appear to have happened.
We are not alone here. Think Skypoint in Faifley and Balloch Library in the Vale.
Hand the building over to either a private operator or a community interest group.
The Council make a poor fist of so many things. This building cost the best part of a million pounds to build. It is a community asset.