Callander Community Council AGM: Chairman’s Report

During the year to April 2009 Callander Community Council has continued to represent the Community on a wide range of issues and has worked closely with neighbouring communities and other responsible agencies. We have also had close links with other community groups mainly Callander Community Development Trust, Callander Enterprise and the Callander Youth Project.

The range of issues we have been dealing with include the following:

• We were very concerned about the planned closure of Buchannan House and the possible changes to the operation of Kirk Care. We were not impressed by the response from Trust Housing Association who manage these facilities but it was clear there was little chance of us getting them to reverse their decision to close Buchannan House.
• On planning there have been numerous planning applications most of which we have had no objections to. During the year the National Park draft local plan came before us for consultation. We had a good debate about the plan including a presentation from the National Park. Overall we agreed that Callander needs to continue developing in terms of the housing, business support and infrastructure. But any development should be controlled so that Callander does not loose its rural character.
• On roads issues we still await the new pelican crossing near the Medical Centre and we continue to have concerns about speeding along Stirling Road. We received significant amounts of correspondence about the planned changes to the road system at Bridgend which resulted in us holding a public meeting to discuss the plans with Stirling Council.
• The Airtricity funding has been a valuable source of income to the Community Council which has enabled us to support a number of local organisations and projects.
• We have led and contributed to some major initiatives in Callander over the past year. Upgrading the St Kessogs building was started as a Community Council project, two public meetings were held to discuss this and, with the Development Trust, we now have outline plans and a business plan for a cultural and events centre.
• Leading on from the St Kessogs project the idea of a Town Plan was discussed. This would be based around previous reports such as the Community Action Plan and recent reports such as the National Park Local Plan to develop a long-term strategy for a sustainable Callander.
• Last in this list is the further contact we have had with Callander, Ontario. This has been going on for some years now with a thought to look into a partnership (twinning) arrangement. These discussions are still going on and it was only last week when an email arrived from the Mayor of Callander.

Over the next 12 months we hope to continue making progress with the many projects we work on and to deal with the numerous issues which come our way. The main new initiative is the development of the Callander Partnership. We have found over the past 12 months that the best way of implementing the large community projects is to work closely with Stirling Council and the National Park. Because of this I have proposed a new working group, the Callander Partnership, which will have the aim to progress the large projects which have been identified through community consultations. The first project as an example is a review of all public assets in Callander. This will include all public buildings as well as car parks, recreation areas, systems of signage, infrastructure etc. From this we intend working with the users/occupiers of the buildings to propose ways for coordinating future uses.

We also want to address the decline in the age group of young working people by looking at the provision of affordable rented housing, employment in the local area and training options, possibly with the creation of a Callander College. This type of work is in the early stages and any developments will be taken back to community groups for discussions.

To support these types of initiatives we will not only need the support of the National Park and Stirling Council but capital and maintenance revenue and administrative support. We were very pleased to hear that the Callander Conservation Area Regeneration fund will bring a large amount of money into the town and we are now looking for a development officer to work with all community organisations over the next few years.

I would finally like to thank my colleagues on the Community Council for all of their hard work during the year. I would also like to thank the representatives from Stirling Council, National Park and Central Scotland Police for the help they have given to Callander.

Richard Johnson