Common Good
Letter sent to the 'Herald' earlier this week for publication, following the latest City Council report on Common Good
Citizens of Glasgow should be extremely concerned about the inability of the Chief Executive to provide an accurate Asset Register of Common Good property (heritable and moveable) belonging to the citizens. The list offered to the Finance, Corporate and Trading Services Policy Development and Scrutiny Committee by the Executive Director of Financial Services on 5th December is a public disgrace, running to all of two-thirds of a single page. The value of ‘fixed assets' amounts to a paltry £2.4 million. The total list of moveable assets (which should include paintings, sculpture and other works of art, books, artefacts, regalia, furniture, silverware, etc, etc)is precisely zero, and no explanation is offered for this spectacular omission. This is extremely worrying and suggests, at the very least, decades of incompetent accounting and a substantial potential loss to the citizens.
A brief definition of the common good which is accepted in legal and parliamentary circles, was directly quoted by the then relevant minister Tom McCabe in Parliament on 17th November 2006, when he said, " . . . . Essentially, the Common Good denoted all property of a Burgh not acquired under statutory powers or held under special trusts." While the City's Director of Finance states that, "the common good is seen as corporate property of the council", Lord Drummond Young in the Court of Session in 2003 noted that, “the town council or other local authority is regarded in law as simply the manager of the property, as representing the community.”
The City Council, in common with all of Scotland's local authorities is required by law (and was reminded by Parliament in March this year) that “Councils are responsible for common good funds within their area and for ensuring that common good assets are properly recorded and insured . . . . . Councils need to maintain accurate asset registers which identify common good assets as such, distinct from the general body of assets under council control.”
Apart from the assets not recorded by reason of previous actions and inactions, The City Council is not entitled, as it does, unilaterally to dream up the conceit that it need not include “assets used for operational purposes by the Council.” ALL assets must be fully recorded and valued, and any assets previously removed from the common good account (and others perhaps illegitimately excluded in the past) should be identified and restored. No doubt many of the assets that the Council does not know it is responsible for have had their ‘management' blithely and anonymously transferred to Culture & Sport Glasgow and its equally undemocratic trading company. I hope the citizens of Glasgow will demand urgent rectification of this appalling situation.
David Harvie
Afton Cottage
82 Bonhill Road
Dumbarton
Scotland
G82 2DY
Tel/Fax: (0)1389 762816
13 /12/ 07