I am presently the only member of Fort William, Inverlochy and Torlundy Community Council to live in the Plantation estate immediately above Fort William town centre.
The next, virtual, meeting of FITCC is at 7pm on Tuesday 16th November, via MS-Teams. There probably won’t be December meeting; from January 2022 FITCC is likely to meet monthly, on the third calendar Tuesday, up to the 19th July – and then return in September for three more months. Ditto 2023 probably. Our meetings are public – visit <fitcc.org> for more information. To join us online, email secretary@fitcc.org for the Teams meeting details.
To contact me directly you either need to send a text message to 07933 760031 (UK, ie +44 79..) or simply use the contact form on this site. I currently write a weekly column (‘Wednesday Headway’) at <DraytonMark.SubStack.com> and I occasionally post extra ‘Plantation News’ on <NextDoor.co.uk>; members can comment and/or message me there, too (it’s free). The complete back-archive of half-a-year’s (or so) ‘Wed-Heads’ are available at <https://DraytonMark.SubStack.com> as well.
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OK, folks: here’s the lowdown on FITCC. Get ready, ’cause there’s bad news and good news. (So let’s look on the bright side: there could have been bad news and worse news, right?)
[[ NB: I first published what follows in late January (’21). I entirely stand by the spirit of what I wrote then, so rather than revise it I have added an afternote to take account, for accuracy’s sake, of one subsequent event. ]]
The good news is that your community council has a statutory duty (dating back to 1973) to “ascertain, co-ordinate, and express” the views of the community it serves. This means you! It means there is a local body, established by law, whose job it is to listen to you and people like you. Then it is tasked with taking stock of all your opinions and conveying them in summary form to any and all relevant civic authorities (eg Police, Highlife Highland, etc) but, most especially and importantly, to the Highland Council in Inverness.
The bad news for residents of Fort William is that your local community council, FITCC, is bloody awful at doing this: diabolically bad. It doesn’t take its duty remotely seriously and has never, ever made any kind of systematic effort to fulfill its obligation to “ascertain, co-ordinate, and express” the views of the community it serves. It is worth saying that this duty is NOT one of many, by the way: It is the ONLY specifically-mandated statutory duty imposed on community councils – and your council is betraying all of us by ignoring it so flagrantly.
I have been campaigning within FITCC to change this for well over a year. Unfortunately, I have made almost no progress. I did succeed in getting a proposal to host an opinion forum on the FITCC website recorded in the January minute – but only as an aspiration. Other ideas for improving accessibility and accountability have been rejected outright. It is hard to avoid drawing the obvious conclusion that several members of the council are intent on muzzling popular opinion, in direct contravention of their legally mandated duty.
In recent weeks I have begun turning up the heat on the council, and I will continue to do that. You deserve much better and, if you agree, then now you know you have at least one champion for your right to be heard: me.
It’s time to raise our voices, -Mark D
[[ Afternote:- In May ’21, FITCC chairman Mark Linfield posted a ‘poll question’ on the FITCC Facebook page to ascertain community views on an admittedly abstruse and complicated issue to do with planning regulations, eliciting thirteen responses (including, very forgivably, one ‘Don’t Know / Not Sure’). Mr Linfield acted on his own initiative so I leave it to the reader to judge the semantics of whether this poll was sufficient to falsify (ie since) my January claim that FITCC has “never, ever made any kind of systematic effort to fulfill its obligation to ‘ascertain, co-ordinate, and express’ the views of the community it serves.” Incidentally, the poll result was (otherwise) unanimous. ]]
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Tread lightly in your dreams – they might come true tomorrow
Community Councillor Mark Drayton 