Campaigners who lost a battle to save a community café in a West Lothian elderly care complex have taken their cause to national financial watchdogs.
West Lothian’s Integration Joint Board agreed to close a café in Bathgate’s Rosemount Gardens complex to save £136,000 in staffing costs.
A campaign formed at the start of the year has told Audit Scotland the West Lothian Board members made their decision on information which was “misleading, inaccurate, contradictory and incomplete”.
Audit Scotland reports in a range of ways on the performance and finances of Scotland’s public bodies.
A detailed letter of complaint has been sent to Colin Crosby, the Chair of Audit Scotland.
Copied into the letter are Graham Hope, the Chief Executive of West Lothian Council, Professor Caroline Hiscox, the Chief Executive of Lothian Health Board, and the chair of the local IJB, Councillor Tom Conn.
The complaint asks the agency to examine the financial background to the closure decision. It states: “The Board and others failed to understand or fully consider the remit of the IJB.
“The high-level consultation was vague and despite requests no detail was given on the number of participants, their responses or details.
“There was nothing in the reports to evaluate the service requirements, and associated costs, that would be needed to fill many of the customer issues that would have to be addressed by the removal of this facility.”
It adds: “This was not just a café but a purposed design of the build to address social integration to help avoid institutional isolation.”
Over the summer. the campaign worked with the local 50+ Network and staff from the council’s Business Gateway team to put together a business plan to operate the Rosemount café space.
The plans proposed a hybrid operation with council’s fianancial input being reduced gradually over the year.
However, at the meeting of the IJB in mid-August board members, including West Lothian councillors, were told that the business plan was flawed with unsustainable risks and no guarantee that savings could be made.
The campaign’s complaint to Audit Scotland says that the efforts to prepare the case for saviour were stymied by public bodies.
The letter states: “The lack of management information involved with the café resulted in a near impossible task to put together a proposal of a coherent business plan from possible alternative operators.
“Despite this there were credible steps taken to put together a proposal to consider the option for keeping the café operational. This included input from other council officers. It was clear from this engagement that it confirmed the information presented in the report to the Board, was flawed.
“It was also pointed out that the requirement for VAT liability may put any planned proposal out of reach to be viable.
“The concern is that in order to meet the call to identify budget cut targets a proposal was suggested to remove the café. It could be justified as not being a statutory service the IJB were required to provide.
“A report that was seriously flawed was put together with the expectation that it would not be challenged.”
In conclusion the campaigners say: “As the lack of financial details throughout this process has been extremely concerning, we request Audit Scotland to look into the lack of accountability and failure to provide financial details as requested from the IJB.
“We also ask Audit Scotland to look at the possible liability for VAT that may have existed for the last nine years the Café has been operating.”
By Stuart Sommerville, Local Democracy Reporter
