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Moray Council urged: ‘Don’t ignore Dufftown’

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A Speyside community leader claims Moray Council has overlooked his town when it comes to crucial funding allocations.

Bed and Breakfast owner Alistair Jeffs says the local authority has ignored Dufftown “for decades” – and recent disappointments have heightened the need for assistance.

The town’s Post Office was abruptly closed last month, leaving elderly residents with a 10-mile round trip to collect their pensions.

And just a week later the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) announced it was to shut Dufftown’s last remaining bank.

Mr Jeffs said: “People think Dufftown has been ignored for decades and in relation to what it brings Moray as a whisky hub, I don’t think it gets enough investment.

“Of course the council can’t be blamed for the Post Office and RBS leaving Dufftown, but there are a lot of vacant premises in the town that could use some funding to help boost the area in light of their departure.”

The community council member, who fronted a campaign to save rural libraries in 2013, made his claims following a meeting of the council’s economic development and infrastructures services committee last week, where no Dufftown items were listed on the agenda.

However, the local authority insisted it would consider funding requests from the town on the same basis as those from anywhere else – if only there were any on the table.

A spokesman said: “The council’s economic development committee welcomes, and will always carefully consider, any requests for financial support that meet the criteria of improving the area’s prosperity.

“However, you have to be in it to win it and we have no record of any such requests from Dufftown recently.”

Chairman of Moray Council’s economic development and infrastructure services committee, John Cowe, said: “I object to the notion there’s nothing happening in that area of Moray, the council is very much involved in Speyside.

“I think these comments are unfounded, and I know that the Dufftown area has a very strong councillor in Fiona Murdoch who fights the area’s cause at every opportunity.”

In April Moray Council launched a project to build 19 new council houses in Dufftown.

Last May the council’s planning committee backed an £18million extension to Mortlach Distillery, outside the town.