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Responding to COVID-19 is expected to cost Argyll and Bute Council more than £12 million. A report going to the Business Continuity Committee (BCC) on Thursday 13th August shows that costs are a mixture primarily of increased expenditure and loss of income: 

Estimates show that Argyll and Bute Council will have a funding gap of more than £42 million between 2021 and 2026. Its funding gap for next year alone, 2021/22, is estimated at nearly £6.7 million. This is before considering the financial pressures of responding to COVID-19, currently estimated at £4.0 million in 2020/21 after already identifying internal savings of £1.3 million. 

As pupils and staff prepare to return to schools in Argyll and Bute next week, the Policy Lead for Education has thanked staff for their unfaltering dedication to get plans in place for schools re-opening, and praised young people for their continued commitment to learning.

LOCAL residents are being warned that traders are cold calling at homes offering to carry out improvement work to the exterior of houses. Argyll and Bute Council’s Trading Standards team has had recent reports of tradesmen in the area offering to do the work and insisting that householders sign a contract there and then. The advice is you could end up badly out of pocket, paying over the odds for work. Policy Lead for Planning Services, Councillor David Kinniburgh, said: “Take our advice and also be aware of the law.

Preparatory work for the Helensburgh Waterfront Development site will start from Monday 10 August, and drivers are encouraged to find alternative parking options in other parts of the town. The new multi-million pound swimming pool and leisure centre will be built on the sea front, on the site behind the existing swimming pool. This initial ‘soft start’ will involve fencing off this area so that it can be set up as a safe construction site.

The Leader of Argyll and Bute Council has called on the First Minister to take immediate and permanent action following yet another landslide on the Rest and Be Thankful leading to road closures and travel disruption. In her letter to the First Minister, Councillor Aileen Morton has asked the Scottish Government to make a commitment today to deliver a permanent solution after a decade of disruption.

Kerbside food waste collections will resume in Helensburgh and Lomond during the week beginning 17 August. You can look up the council website and see when your first collection will be. If you have a printed calendar, you can start following it again for your food waste collection dates from 17 August.

Young people and their families are celebrating success today, with the long-awaited SQA awards announced for S4, S5 and S6 qualifications. The results follow months of disruption for schools, pupils and their families which saw home learning developed and a new national assessment process introduced, as part of Scotland’s response to the threat of COVID-19. Early indications are that overall Argyll and Bute’s young people have overcome this disruption and secured qualifications that mean they move onto positive destinations.

Residents in Argyll and Bute are being asked to say what matters most to them when it comes to housing in Argyll and Bute. The council and its partners are preparing a new Local Housing Strategy which will set out priorities for action in the next five years (2021-26). We want to ensure the new strategy identifies issues and priorities across all types and tenures of housing and related services.

Argyll and Bute Council is reminding people about the area’s popularity as a prime filming location, after the government announced a £500 million scheme to help kickstart film companies struggling due to Covid 19. A number of high profile film and television productions have been filmed in Argyll and Bute in recent years, as well as various documentaries, adverts and other productions. The area’s stunning landscape is also continuing to attract fashion photoshoots, with Urban Outfitters and Stella McCartney just two who have recently visited.