A council should be judged on the basics: open toilets, emptied bins, safe bridges and honest answers.
What’s happening
- Leisure cut back. Live Borders, which runs our pools, libraries and halls, is moving to a “fewer, but better” estate. Peebles Community Council calculates its funding has fallen 45% in real terms since 2016.
- Communities left holding the keys. Live Borders gave the Peebles Drill Hall just weeks’ notice that it was withdrawing support. The Peebles Men’s Shed has waited around two and a half years for the Haylodge depot. Volunteers are taking on St Ronan’s Wells and the Memorial Hall in Innerleithen.
- Basics failing. Glass banks in Innerleithen have gone unemptied for weeks; public toilets have been locked after vandalism; town Christmas trees are no longer funded.
- Council Tax up 8.5% in 2026/27, while the Accounts Commission found complaints and FOI requests handled outside legal deadlines.
Our position
- No closure without a real community takeover plan, with money, time and expert help.
- Libraries are essential services in every community.
- Publish the numbers. Honest, inflation-adjusted figures on services, and quarterly public reports on complaints.
- Raise money fairly. A Borders visitor levy spent on what visitors use, and council-owned local energy that earns income for decades.
- Consult properly, with realistic deadlines, not days.
- Replace Council Tax with a fairer tax based on what homes are worth today.
