Clackmannanshire Consultation Database

Public engagement ran from 9^th January to 1^st February 2019.  We put forward a range of options for savings and feedback was received via a variety of methods.

The budget engagement attracted a mixed reaction from the public. We received 696 responses to the online survey.

Three public events were held, we received letters and written representations, held meetings with parent council, young peoples’ groups and 3^rd sector organisations/groups impacted by the proposals.

Four petitions were also received and these were presented to the Place and People Committees on 19 February 2019.

Councillors met on 6th March 2019 and agreed the budget for 2019/20. All respondents’ views were taken into account. Savings of £4.810million and growth of £1.4m were approved

Capital Receipts of £2.041m were used to support the budget and Council Tax has been increased by 4%.

A new Funding Officer post has been created to maximise income opportunities for the Council and a Transformation Fund of £500,000 has been created to support the Council's transformation programme.

The Council continues with the corporate redesign programme as approved by Council in March 2019.

Details of all budget decisions made can be accessed on our website.

Clackmannanshire Council is proposing to change the primary schools Admissions Policy so that pupils that can demonstrate affiliation to the RC church by means of baptismal certificate, would remain entitled to enrol at their catchment denominational school in these circumstances, but all other pupils would be required to submit a placing request.

It is proposed that the revised policy would take effect from school session 2019/20 but that the revised policy would not apply to children currently attending either of the two Roman Catholic Primary schools.

21 responses were received to the online consultation. 14 of these agreed with the change and 7 disagreed. A response to those who disagreed is contained in the report.

At public meetings, Church representatives and parents had no objections. The Education Scotland report detailed no objections.

Based on the feedback from the consultation process and the conclusions of the Education Scotland report, a report will be made to the meeting of the People Committee of Clackmannanshire Council on 14 March 2019 recommending acceptance of the change in the Admissions policy.

We asked what you thought about our draft British Sign Language Plan.

We promoted engagement on the plan through our website, the local newspaper and social media. We also used BSL videos and shared our messages with local and national partner organisations, including community councils, Clackmannanshire Third Sector Interface, the Sensory Centre in Camelon and the British Deaf Association.

We gathered views in different ways:

• Public meetings in the Speirs Centre, Alloa during August and September 2018

• An online survey

• Comments by email

You told us:

There is a general lack of understanding around deafness and BSL. It is often assumed, incorrectly, that D/deaf people should be able to easily communicate through written English

• It can be very difficult for a D/deaf BSL to find the information they need on websites because it is usually only presented in English

• Customer service staff in many organisations do not know what to do when a D/deaf person makes an enquiry

• Families with D/deaf children said that courses in BSL were expensive and often involved long journey times to take part

• There is a lot of misunderstanding about the value of BSL to D/deaf people. In particular, there is often an assumption that cochlear implants negate the need for a visual language, but it is important distinguish what is essentially a medical intervention from the social and cultural benefits offered by BSL

• There is significant local demand for learning at least some BSL

We made some changes to the draft BSL plan. It was approved by Clackmannanshire Council on 25th October 2018.

The plan is available in BSL at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYsYiplr_vHP0M3XvnJ7w1w/videos?view=0&shelf_id=1&sort=dd