Leader of Orkney Islands Council, Heather Woodbridge, has welcomed UK Government Levelling Up funding for Kirkwall of £20million.

As part of the 10 year deal a Board has to be set up to administer the ‘endowment style’ funds.

OIC Leader Heather Woodbridge, said:

“This is hugely welcome news for Orkney. The Levelling Up fund has already made a tremendous difference to communities across Scotland and it is great that Orkney will now be getting its share of that.

“The allocation comes on the back of several years of work by elected members – past and present- and officials to fight Orkney’s corner, making the case repeatedly for funding for our islands.

“We are awaiting further discussions with the UK Government on the finer details of the fund, but our clear aspirations are that the benefits of the fund are spread as far across Orkney as the funding conditions will allow, and that the decisions about how the fund will be spent are made with significant input from our communities, ensuring that community voice is at the heart of these discussions.”

The UK Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt’s Spring Budget statement announced funding on the ‘Long Term Plan for Towns’ as :

“£400 million of investment to extend the Long-Term Plan for Towns to a further twenty places across the UK. This provides places with ten years of endowment-style funding and support worth up to £20 million to invest in communities and regeneration. The full list of towns is: Royal Sutton Coldfield, Darlington, Runcorn, Canvey Island, Thetford, King’s Lynn, Ramsgate, Eastbourne, Harlow, Newton-le-Willows, Rawtenstall, Wisbech, Carlton (Gedling), Bedworth, Arbroath, Peterhead, Kirkwall, Rhyl, Derry/Londonderry, and Coleraine.”

Robert Leslie, the SNP General Election candidate for Orkney and Shetland says the £20m Levelling Up funding for Kirkwall should be used to kickstart a real drive on energy efficiency across the town to bring down fuel poverty, and act as a pilot for such work in other rural areas.

He said that the numerous UK Tory Prime Ministers and Chancellors of recent years had failed to address the inequity of Orkney and other areas of the Highlands and Islands paying unsustainably high prices for electricity, based on wholesale gas prices, when the islands are producing more clean, green electricity than they can use annually.

“If there is levelling up to do in areas such as Kirkwall and in the wider island communities, it is in energy, policy and regulation over which is entirely reserved to Westminster. This latest Budget had nothing in the way of energy support for households who have been driven into fuel poverty by successive electricity price hikes.

“To make up for the inequity that islanders off the mains gas grid suffer, this funding should be used to address issues that have been ignored by the UK Government and by its energy regulator Ofgem for too long.”

‘While the Scottish Government has run a national fuel poverty programme and an area-based scheme in Orkney to address energy efficiency, it is widely recognised that we need to go faster and deeper with retrofitting to meet targets to reduce fuel poverty and cut emissions. Spending this UK money in Kirkwall would free up more of the Scottish Government funding for other parishes and islands.

“Establishing a team of electricity meter installers in Kirkwall, who could travel around the islands would be another good use of the funding given the massive shortage of meter engineers willing or able to come here to replace broken meters or install smart meters. Strengthening the communication network for smart meters to address the issue of some areas in Kirkwall and the wider islands still apparently not being ‘smart ready’ would also be helpful.

“While I doubt that £20 million will go very far to address all these energy policy weaknesses or barriers that have pushed more residents in Kirkwall and the wider community into fuel poverty for too long, it would be some kind of start. Lessons learned and skills gained could then be used to roll out schemes across the parishes and islands, using existing Scottish Government funding.

“While this kind of one-off cash award grabs headlines, only independence will give Scotland the powers to make our plentiful energy resources work for Scotland’s people, not shareholders.”

The Orkney News will be bringing more reaction to the UK Budget tomorrow.