THE leader of a council yesterday admitted his plan of giving up direct control of museums would pose "significant and genuine" risks.
But Glasgow's Steven Purcell won backing from his cabinet to go ahead with a business plan to take a closer look at the pros and cons of the proposal, which would result in the authority's culture and leisure services department being spun off into an arms' length charitable trust.
He did so despite intense scrutiny from opposition leaders Christopher Mason of the Liberal Democrats and John Mason of the SNP, who questioned the move's practicality and warned it would erode democratic accountability.
"You are raising a number of significant and genuine points of risk that will have to be addressed in the business plan, " Mr Purcell told Christopher Mason. "You are right to raise them."
The LibDem had told Mr Purcell and his Labour-dominated cabinet that any arms' length body would inevitably fall outwith the control of the council and city voters.
Mr Mason said: "These things take on a life of their own." No current administration, he said, could make promises that would be binding on an ostensibly independent body for years in advance.
Mr Purcell has insisted that any new trust would only manage council assets, not own them. Everything from local community halls to Glasgow's world-class museums and art galleries, the biggest civic collection of art in Europe, would stay in public ownership. Free admission would remain, he said.
Both Mr Purcell and his critics agree on one thing: the proposal is all about money. Mr Purcell believes that the trust would free up more than GBP48m over five years, mostly because it would not have to pay nondomestic rates of GBP6m a year. That money, he said, could be reinvested in "exciting" developments at museums, libraries, leisure centres, and community halls.
His critics, however, fail to see the point of a huge constitutional upheaval simply to rob the Scottish Executive of GBP6m a year. Why not simply ask for the cash, they asked.
Christopher Mason questioned how a body that councillors still controlled would be allowed to keep its charitable status. Any new body would be accountable to the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator.
Its chief executive, Jane Ryder, yesterday said: "This is a very interesting proposal. The law certainly allows such trusts to be set up and indeed this approach has already been taken by some authorities."
But she added: "Once a charity is recognised, any trustees, however appointed, need to bear in mind the legal obligations of charity trustees."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article