ABERDEENSHIRE Council has a new provost after an SNP-led partnership took control of the authority from a Tory-led alliance.
The move came at a special meeting called by the SNP group after four members of the council quit last months amid claims that the ruling alliance – comprising Tory, LibDem, Labour and Independent councillors – was becoming too conservative in outlook.
SNP group leader Hamish Vernal was yesterday appointed as the new provost, with Allison Grant his deputy after Jill Webster and Norman Smith were removed from the posts.
Webster said it felt like a “stab in the back” and said residents of Aberdeenshire did not want the council to be “mired in skullduggery”.
However, the SNP’s motion for Webster and Smith to be replaced was carried 34 votes to 32.
The council leadership will be shared between Independent Martin Kitts-Hayes and the SNP’s Richard Thomson.
Kitts-Hayes said: “I think it’s going to work very well. We have to be able to compromise.”
Thomson added: “Job-sharing arrangements are becoming more and more commonplace in society.”
Webster, the ousted former provost said: “I am undoubtedly very sad, because I have put my heart and soul into the role. It feels like a stab in the back.”
However Green councillor Martin Ford added: “Provost Webster has worked very hard, there’s no personal criticism. She was just part of an administration which has lost its majority.”
Former council leader Jim Gifford hit out at the new administration. He said: “We are hugely disappointed that we are being thrown out of office because of the actions of a few people motivated by personal agendas. We signed up three years ago to a joint manifesto and were working our way through that. They are just making it up as they go along.”
Vernal said he was committed to an administration that would “think about the people of Aberdeenshire”.
He added: “We are looking at this positively. We are brim-full of ideas within our partnership and within the SNP group and the Progressive Alliance. That’s the positive message we can put out.”
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