A £7.961 million six month services fee has been set for the arms length organisation "High life Highland" which will deliver community learning and leisure services for The Highland Council.
Members of the Council's Education, Culture and Sport (ECS) Service have agreed to a half year budget of £7.082 million and service level agreement costs of £0.879 million from 1 October 2011 to the end of March 2012. They also set a 2% efficiency target for the financial year 2012/13.
The measures are intended to give the new board of High Life Highland (HLH) stability for their first six months of operation and financial certainty for the new financial year staring in April 2012.
Councillor Bill Fernie, Chairman of The Highland Council's Education, Culture and Sport Committee wished the new HLH board of 8 independent and 4 councillor directors the very best wishes in their endeavours in running the new organisation and added that he was looking forward to a "productive and mutually beneficial relationship between the board and the Council's ECS Committee".
Acknowledging the huge amount of work involved in establishing High Life Highland Councillor Fernie thanked the Director of ECS, Hugh Fraser and key staff members in his team for a very logical and smooth process to this key milestone. He added: "I know that all involved have worked well above what is normally expected to achieve the transfer on time, while marinating the normal service delivery to the public."
The Council previously agreed to establish High Life Highland as a company limited by guarantee (with charitable status) with the Council as the sole member and with a wholly owned trading subsidiary. High Life Highland will deliver community learning and leisure services on behalf of the Council, with the aim of enhancing the quality of life in the Highlands by developing, delivering and promoting leisure and learning opportunities.
Councillor Bill Fernie said, "The setting up of this new company will save the council almost £1million each year from rates that are usually paid on our properties and means that we do not have to make more savings from other services. This is a dramatic change in the way we run our leisure services but I am sure that the new company we have launched will be more efficient and the fact we can immediately save a million pounds each year is a flying start to be welcomed"