Today, Full Council met for the second time since the election.

The meeting began with a Notice of Motion from Cllr Ford asking the Chief Executive to write to the Scottish Government expressing the Council’s support for the introduction of the Single Transferable Vote system for future Scottish Parliament elections.
The motion passed – I voted in favour.
It is a long term view of Liberal Democrats that we should campaign for fairer voting systems across the UK, and despite this not being a matter for Aberdeenshire Council, I had no reason not to support Cllr Ford’s motion.

The Draft Council Priorities 2017-2022 & Medium Term Financial Strategy was agreed endorsing priorites on Public Service Excellence, Successful & Sustainable Communities, Aspirational People and Caring for Communities.

The new Vice-Chair of the Business Services Committee was agreed to be Cllr Mike Roy who succeeds Cllr Colin Clark, who resigned from that position recently.

The decision of the Standards Commission in Case No. LA/AS/1963 & 1993 was noted.

The Council considered the Unaudited Accounts for 2016/17, noted the revenue budget monitoring for the year just ended, approved virements, noted the balances of the General Fund, HRA and other reserves, noted the Non-HRA Capital plan and agreed proposed changes to the capital budget for 2017/18.

We noted the legislative framework that controls the payment of remuneration to Councillors and agreed the current scheme & application time of remuneration.

We approved the Aberdeenshire Action Plan in response to the recommendations of the Cole Report, in relation to the Edinburgh Schools Inquiry.
We endorsed the approach to remediation being progressed in respect of the structural issues identified at PFI and PPP Schools, and instructed officers to provide follow up reports to Council on progress.

We set up a Sustainability Committee – and appointed Cllrs Colin Pike and Isobel Davidson to Chair and Vice Chair respectively.

In private, we discussed to items – on the tender report for Banchory Sports Village, and the Depot Strategy for Macduff Key Depot and Tarlair Industrial Estate.