Parents who run a traditional music project in Lochaber have struck a discordant note after receiving a bill for more than £9,000 for room hire to deliver instrument tuition to pupils.
At a meeting of the Feis Lochabair committee, they were told of a new payment regime for charging for lets for room hire and learned the price had risen significantly, which has put the future of the lessons in jeopardy.
Feis-led follow-on classes allow pupils, who have been part of an annual week-long festival, to continue with low-cost lessons, encouraging youngsters to play instruments such as accordion, fiddle, drums, guitar, pipes and whistle.
Angela Mack, who works as an administrator for the classes said: “We deliver 66 lessons to children in traditional music and we have been doing this for a long time.
“We recently had to fill out a new let form and discovered we would need to start paying for the use of the school. For four and a half hours, is it £243.81 per week – and we run classes for 37 weeks a year.
“To provide our tuition from August, the minimum costs for the school let would be £9,020. I can’t imagine that is the cost of the caretaker alone. Highland Council is making money from this – and what gets us is that this is meant to be a community school, but who can afford these prices?
“If we were running a Brownie pack or Guides, there would be no cost.
“The Feis cannot afford this. It’s an unbelievable amount of money. We really need everybody on board to help fight this and get Highland Council to listen to our voice.”
Councillor Raymond Bremner, who runs a similar project in Caithness said there should be a blanket policy to encourage music and Gaelic throughout the region with one cost for all.
A Highland Council spokeswoman said: “On February 14, members of Highland Council set a revenue budget for 2019-20 and approved ‘A Sustainable Highland’ which is set to deliver £37.45million in savings over the next three years.
“One of the budget savings agreed was to increase school and facility lets’ income across the Highland region to generate £50,000 in 2019-20. This is being delivered through a below inflation increase in school and facility lets rates to achieve additional income with the council and High Life Highland working together.”