Securing jobs and maintaining services is focus of High Life Highland chief as charity delivering sport, leisure and library facilities targets bounce back from coronavirus crisis
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A “LASER-like” focus on protecting services and jobs is being promised by the boss of High Life Highland – as he eyes up its “full recovery” from the pandemic by the end of next year.
Steve Walsh has also vowed to protect budget memberships to ensure everybody can maintain access to facilities at a time when physical and mental health are being put under strain.
Mr Walsh said that Covid-19 had put serious strain on finances – at one point wiping £9 million from its projected income – but that job furlough schemes, costs savings and “through being commercially astute” the charity was in a much stronger financial state this autumn. And although continued uncertainty over the future direction of the pandemic hangs over all corners of society, he believes the organisation is still on course for its “end point” goal of a full recovery by the close of 2021.
"We delivered over 3000 volunteering hours over the period of the pandemic – mainly to humanitarian assistance centres and key worker hubs. But our employees also drove for the NHS and did lots of other things in their communities, and I’m really proud of that effort."
“Back in March, if you’d asked me where we were financially, I’d have said we were in a really bad hole,” he said. “The job retention scheme has helped us massively. That has been the biggest differentiator in terms of our ability to mitigate the financial losses.
“We’ve [also] been able to mitigate through cost savings, through being commercially astute, through making sure that wherever we can, we maximise income opportunities.
He continued: “We’ve continued to stabilise through the year and we’ve brought our projected deficit down, continually, and that’s something that we will work on right the way through the financial year.
“Next year, as you say, it’s uncertain as we’re not quite sure where we’ll be with respect to the pandemic but our focus, laser-like, is making sure we do all we can to secure the services that we deliver which are so important to physical and mental health and wellbeing. And also to secure jobs.
“That’s the focus of the High Life Highland board, the senior team and everybody within the organisation, because we are all hugely passionate about what we do, and we know just how important it is that we protect the services that we deliver to our communities.”
He believes that one particular bright spot in recent months has been the growing demand for High Life Highland services as people get used to life under Covid-19.
There have been one million “customer engagements” with the organisation’s libraries during the pandemic, despite access being restricted to online borrowing for safety reasons. There have been a similar number of engagements in the archives.
And he was full of praise for staff, who not only ensured its sites could reopen swiftly after lockdown, but also helped to keep services like music tuition going online for 400 youngsters across the region during the height of the first wave – something “no other service in Scotland managed to do – and it’s all down to our lead music manager Norman Bolton”.
He added: “The other thing was that lots of colleagues were furloughed during lockdown. Many of them volunteered right across their communities. We delivered over 3000 volunteering hours over the period of the pandemic – mainly to humanitarian assistance centres and key worker hubs. But our employees also drove for the NHS and did lots of other things in their communities, and I’m really proud of that effort. High Life Highland is all about being in the community and serving communities.”
