The councillor heading up Aberdeen’s fight against poverty has been told his job is now “untenable” – after voting to strip funding for a music charity in his own backyard.
Torry and Ferryhill councillor Christian Allard claimed Big Noise Torry made “no impact whatsoever” on the area’s most vulnerable.
Mr Allard serves as the coalition’s anti-poverty and inequality convener. He will face a could now face a confidence vote.
His comments came as the SNP and Liberal Democrat administration last Wednesday pulled £750,000 in support for Sistema Scotland, which runs the programme.
Not even three days later, the SNP-led Scottish Government rushed to find £1.5 million to keep the charity operating across the country.
As news of the national bailout broke, Mr Allard tweeted it was “great news for the young people of Torry“.
Allard: ‘Great news’ that charity making ‘no impact whatsoever’ is backed with taxpayer cash
Less than 72 hours earlier Mr Allard had said: “Let’s be very clear: if we had the money, we wouldn’t (support Sistema Scotland) either.
“(Council) officers worked hard to quantify whether Sistema has gone out of their way to consult with the most vulnerable and challenged in Torry.
“The result is no – Sistema hasn’t. And if they have, it had no impact whatsoever on the people who needed help the most after more than £4m spent over six years.”
His fellow SNP Torry and Ferryhill councillor Lee Fairfull was also critical of Big Noise Torry’s work.
Sistema Scotland said they had “misrepresented” analysis of their impact.
The P&J pressed the former member of the Scottish and European parliaments on his apparent U-turn. He told us it was about equity in Torry, one of Aberdeen’s most deprived areas.
“(Sistema Scotland) is getting a reprieve to do what I have asked them to do, to return to their original aim, to go out of their way to engage with the most vulnerable families living in Torry,” he tweeted.
Watch Mr Allard’s speech on Sistema Scotland’s Big Noise Torry from Wednesday’s Aberdeen City Council budget meeting:
Anti-poverty chief Allard’s position ‘untenable’ after ‘unsubstantiated attack’ on Big Noise Torry
However, Mr Allard is now facing calls to give up his £33,000-a-year anti-poverty convenership – and will face a vote of no confidence on Wednesday.
The Conservative councillor in Torry and Ferryhill, Michael Kusznir, urged his SNP ward colleague to quit.
In an email to Mr Allard, he said the “unsubstantiated attack” on a key council partner was a “serious error of judgment” which “imperilled a key regeneration programme in Torry.”
Mr Kusznir told The Press And Journal: “Christian Allard is no longer fit to continue as convener of the anti-poverty and inequality committee.
“His actions this week: voting to defund and terminate the Big Noise Torry programme and then praising its saving show that he has more faces than the Town House clock.
“I feel like we have lived through an episode of (political satire) The Thick of It, yet unfortunately for the people of Torry this has been real life.
“We need a convener committed to positive work on anti-poverty, not the brass neck of Councillor Allard.
“I hope that he will do the right thing and if not, then the council should vote to remove him as convener.”
Resignation calls branded a ‘political stunt’
But Mr Allard told The P&J he had no intention of resigning.
In fact, he blamed the need at all for his anti-poverty brief on successive UK Governments run by Mr Kusznir’s Conservative colleagues.
He said: “I voted for our partnership budget that prioritised tackling the cost-of-living crisis and prioritised investment in education, protecting the Fairer Aberdeen Fund, funding foodbanks and pantries, and getting a new primary school built in Torry.
“While I and my partnership colleagues brought forward more than £1m to tackle poverty in the city, the Conservative and Unionist opposition group at council proposed borrowing money to give businesses a rates holiday. That is a proposal straight out of the book of the shortest premiership of British history, that of Liz Truss.
I am sure the people of Aberdeen will see through this political stunt. Our partnership is delivering a fair budget for a fairer Aberdeen.”
Big – angry – Noise at music charity’s funding being cut in Torry – and across Scotland
Big Noise Torry offers free music tuition to more than 750 children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
There was uproar at the decision to end entirely the council’s funding of the project last week, though it was not only considered in Aberdeen.
Big Noise cash was also cut by the SNP-run council in Dundee and reduced by Labour in Stirling.
It was not until the likes of Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Westminister leader who employs Mr Allard in his Aberdeen South constituency office, got involved that money was found to keep Sistema afloat nationwide.
In the Granite City, councillors were tasked with cutting nearly £47 million from its year-on-year budget. It follows years of being among the lowest-funded local authorities in the country.
But after two days of fury, Culture Minister Neil Gray announced he had found £1.5m for all of Scotland’s at-risk Big Noise projects.
Conversation