Treating South Ayrshire Council services like a business is key say leadership duo
South Ayrshire Council's new leadership pairing have insisted that taking a business-like approach to some services is the only way forward against a backdrop of ever-increasing financial pressures.
Independent Council Leader Brian Connolly and Depute Alec Clark insist that investment in non-statutory services must be sustainable, if not completely self sufficient.
Cllr Connolly, who became the council's first independent leader in May, said that this shift in South Ayrshire Council's approach has been the biggest difference he has seen since he joined the council almost 20 years ago.
Up until his election as leader, Cllr Connolly held the sports and leisure portfolio in both the Labour/SNP administration and the Conservative-run cabinet from 2022.
During that time, there had been massive investment in South Ayrshire's sporting facilities, he said.
But he insisted it was not simply a case of throwing money at projects, with investment essential to bring money back in to sustain those facilities.
He said this was one of the reasons why members of the administration wanted to maintain stability in the face of the ongoing crisis around procurement that saw both the previous leader Martin Dowey and Chief Executive Mike Newall quit.
He said: "It is part of the reason why we wanted to continue.
"Our sports facilities are just fantastic. The money that we have invested in these facilities is absolutely fantastic.
"But the aim, and this probably took us three-quarters of our time in the council, we've finally got to looking at it like a business.
"Let us get people in and let's generate revenue. Revenue is the issue, the capital is much easier.
"We can invest the capital, but only if we are looking at it as a business.
"We are looking at Troon [pool] and we think that, once the extension is in place, the figures will be through the roof.
"Prestwick is just about to reopen. When we do the Quayzone I am sure it will be the same.
"The football pitches and the golf courses, they are all generating revenue.
Depute Leader Clark, who represents Girvan and South Carrick, added: "We both come from a business background.
"You have to look at something and say, what can we do to make that investment pay?
"If it doesn't pay, it isn't going to work.
"Anything we can to generate revenue we will do. It means, with sustainability, it will be there for the general public to enjoy."
The financial strain faced by councils has made the need to find more sustainable approaches is key, they said.
However, they acknowledge that the introduction of charging or increasing fees is often viewed negatively.
Cllr Clark cited to the investment of more than £250,000 on public toilets at Ainslie Park in Girvan.
He said: "First thing we saw was someone saying 'I'm not paying 50p to go to the toilet.
"But these toilets are going to be cleaned every day, there has been investment to improve the facilities.
"I would ask whether they would want the facility or just have it left as a dump?"
Cllr Connolly insisted that this shift in emphasis is the most significant he has seen.
He said: " It is not just a case of saying this is a service we have to provide and that is the cost, we are looking at how we can get the revenue back in.
"Whether toilets or golf courses. We have to get the money back in.
"That then eases the financial pressure on the council."
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Thirty-three quite detailed policy recommendations were agreed unanimously by every stakeholder on that group, which, in hindsight, was a quite remarkable achievement. And those recommendations were then accepted in full by Scottish ministers. TODAY'S CHALLENGES Liam: There seems to be a culture just now that has shifted back in time, when it's cool to be cruel again. The rise of the so-called 'manosphere' online and normalisation of hate has had an impact on young people for example. I can remember the 1990s as a young guy growing up, when we were often encouraged to display our masculinity in very different ways from the way we did five years ago, when it was encouraged to be better men and softer, kinder men. I feel as if things started to shift in a different direction due to some of the influences on social media targeted at specific groups of people. Some of the political narratives that have been introduced and normalised are really distressing. Jordan: We've had the Me Too movement, which rightly and accurately called out men's violence against women. We had equal marriage. And we had Black Lives Matter. I think that quite a lot of what we're seeing now culturally is the kind of last-gasp backlash to that progress. That's impacted us as an organisation in that we're seeing US culture war rhetoric imported here. In 2018 it would not have been normal or acceptable to target an education organisation – one that is working on a daily basis to address homophobic bullying in schools, that employs teachers to deliver those education services – to call their staff groomers, and yet that is now a normal experience for us. Even doing this interview, we have to prepare not only ourselves but our family and staff for the online harassment that will come from that. I think we're seeing LGBT topics and education initiatives like ours being weaponised and misrepresented to distract from decades of consecutive economic failure that have made people's lives harder. In the United States, we see the impact of that disinformation and false claims such as 'children are being told to transition in schools'. We had that with Section 28. We've had that censorship. It's dangerous and it's damaging, and I think that we have to be very careful not to give credence to that type of rhetoric, to this idea that there's inappropriate or extreme teaching happening in schools. The reality of the situation is children are learning about same-sex families alongside lots of other types of families. They're learning about the impact of homophobia that they already see and experience at school, and they're given factual information about historical events. We have to challenge these false narratives, these lies, with the truth. 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