The Community Council started a project this March at the High School with a view to creating a community garden. The initial funding came from a budget to reduce anti-social behaviour and promote inclusion. We believe that the outcome has been of such great benefit to the children and wider community that we are very keen to keep it going and need this funding to enable that.  

So far both our 'Young Carers Cookery Class' and the 'Garden Group' who helped to design the layout and grow the vegetables have used some of the ingredients they have grown to make soups and salads. So we are re-connecting children with the food they eat. Next year we hope to continue with that and also to sell some of the produce to the community or in the school to help fund our planting and costs for the following year. We also hope to have sessions for adult carers who can work in the garden during evenings and at weekends.  The project has helped inclusivity by engaging children with additional support needs; has given both children, teachers and the wider community life skills by showing them how to plant using organic principles and using companion planting and it is also aiding health and wellbeing with the youngsters.  We included an outdoor classroom in the design so other students can and have used the area and next year we hope to have a hidden seating space surrounded with sensory plants where children can have some personal space should they need it.

One significant outcome from this year is that the three local primary schools are now also looking at helping with our project and indeed hoping to set up their own gardens. Initially one of the ideas was to have the transitioning P7 children growing things that they would then see when they started in the August when joining their first year at High School, making transition easier and helping the kids to collaborate and make new friends. We hope to have that organised for this coming school year.  The school has even created a gardening award on the back of the project.

We want to keep our garden growing for years to come - so please support our project and give us your vote – thanks. Please vote for this project on the Aviva website, you can award your full 10 points. The link is: https://community-fund.aviva.co.uk/voting/project/view/17-5327  The website can be a little slow to respond so please persist, this link takes your directly to the project, you then just either login or register and cast your 10 votes.

On Tuesday, October 24, the Bridge of Allan and Dunblane Rotary Club will mark World Polio Day along with other Rotarians across the country and with the 'Purple4Polio' campaign in full swing, Dunblane Cathedral and other buildings will don the colour for one night.

Since Rotary and its partners launched the Global Polio Eradication Initiative nearly 30 years ago, the incidence of polio has plummeted by more than 99.9 per cent, from about 350,000 cases a year in 125 countries to under 15. But mass inoculation has to continue to ensure the final eradication of the appalling disease. In order to sustain the progress, local club members will be raising money to support 'End Polio Now' – for more, visit endpolio.org

This is a letter from the Stirling Observer from 11 October 2017

It is with great disappointment, but not surprise, that I have heard about the controversy regarding the footpaths on Dumyat. Two months ago I retired to Keswick in the Lake District but prior to that I lived in a cottage visible from the Dumyat path for over 20 years and was a regular, often daily, walker up Dumyat. So it is an area that I know extremely well and love. During that time, I was secretary of Stirling Before Pylons, a community member of Stirling Council's Beauly-Denny working group and most recently the council's Beauly-Denny legacy group.

It seems to me that all the official parties to this process have been negligent and not dealt with the matter professionally enough. Some examples include:

1. The Energy Consents Unit of the Scottish Government appointed consultants, Ironside Farrer, with no in-house knowledge of hill path restoration, although the Government knew this work was a requirement as part of the permission they had given for the Beauly-Denny power line.

2. Scottish Power transmission director Pearse Murray is quoted in the Observer of September 20, 2017, that the works had been approved by the legacy group. This is not the case. The group approved the principle of the works but had not, to my knowledge, seen any of the detailed current proposals.

3. The legacy group has failed to meet over the last 12 months despite a number of written requests by myself to the chair that meetings were needed to monitor and approve the detailed proposals. This would have highlighted the current issues in advance.

4. Ironside Farrer held several consultation meetings with Friends of the Ochils and myself. At these meetings we stated that these proposals would be sensitive to the wishes of the community and that wider consultation was required but they decided not to pursue this.

We also stated that their plans were over-engineered and not appropriate for the landscape setting and scale of Dumyat. In our view a more sensitive and complete solution to the erosion caused by walkers and mountain bikers was required. They wrote saying they didn't accept our views and that they were proposing to proceed with their plans which have led to the current complaints.

I visited Stirling last week and was fortunate enough to meet the contractor's site manager who was on Dumyat at the time. He gave me a thorough explanation of the works he was carrying out. This was the first time in all the meetings over several years regarding this project that I felt I was talking to someone who understood the issues associated with upland paths and how they can be implemented. Following this discussion I have some confidence that if his revised proposals are implemented we could see a satisfactory solution on Dumyat. This should involve consultation with the community and experts in the field. My own feeling all along has been that a satisfactory solution would be more expensive than budgeted and I was surprised to learn that Scottish Power have threatened to pull out of the scheme and reinstate their works to date. That is not a realistic option given that their approval for Beauly-Denny included a condition that compensator works would be carried out to the Dumyat path.

In his letter of approval for Beauly-Denny, the Energy Minister, Fergus Ewing, also highlighted that the Ochils Area of Great Landscape Value, including Dumyat, was an area where compensatory environmental improvements should be made. He made funds available for this through the Beauly-Denny Mitigation Scheme and provided an additional £75,000 through the planning condition to Stirling Council.

It is important that those currently involved, particularly the community, should ensure that all these funds are fully utilised on the scheme and not used elsewhere. My own view is that additional funding will be required and that this should be forthcoming from Scottish Power. The visual impact of the Beauly-Denny line is recognised as being much more severe than anticipated in this location. I am also concerned that the existing process has wasted a significant proportion of the budget on professional fees and works on site, and that this is ultimately a failure by Scottish Power to manage the process.

Peter Pearson