A new Facebook page and a petition of No Confidence in West Dunbartonshire Council has been set up by members of the community.

The page states: “Due to the recent actions of the West Dunbartonshire Labour Administration, it is safe to say many have lost faith in their ability to run the council.” The page has gathered almost 800 followers in just five days. The accompanying petition has 200 signatures and a list of measures the creators wish to see fulfilled including:restoration of monthly council meetings allowing councillors to take back powers delegated to unelected officers; consultation on the council capital programme; consultation on the current council strategy; consultation on pro-rata representation on all council committees; and for all the consultations on the list to be meaningful and productive with the results clearly implemented by the administration.

The creator of the page wished to stay anonymous but told the Reporter he started the page after becoming frustrated with the "undemocratic" council.

He said: “In our council specifically it is Labour that is the problem, other councillors are not given fair representation on committees and are limited in what they can actually do within the council. West Dunbartonshire Council is a very undemocratic institution with a lot of councillor powers given to unelected council officers.

“In general I was fed up with the council, but the main reason behind it was when they started playing politics with primary school hours. It was the tipping point and when I said ‘enough is enough’.” Having gathered considerable support in just a few days, he says he’s not too surprisedby the level of interest. He added: “I’m surprised it blew up as fast as it did, mainly thanks to independent councillor George Black and Scottish Socialist Party Councillor Jim Bollan. However part of me knew it would eventually gain popularity as many are unhappy, some very angry.” The council administration has been under fire since December when it announced the areae_SSRqs biggest ever budget cuts, with education suffering a large share of the £17m loss.

However he said the budget cuts would have went ahead not matter what mainstream party was in power. He added: “In other councils around Scotland the SNP is putting through council cuts. There is a problem with council funding in general – mainly due to the dysfunctional council tax.” He added: “To me part of the anger in people is the way they handled the cuts; the way they used primary school hours as a general election tactic; and the way they only displayed the positives on the council’s Facebook page.” The page could now be transformed into a 'grass roots cross party, pressure group’ as support continues to grow.

In response, councillor Michelle McGinty said: “I think you will always have people that are anti-Labour and will look for any reason to criticise. I think this was done on the back on the schools cuts, I personally have not had people complaining to me about the administration.” She added: “The climate we’re in now is anti-Labour and people have their right to their say, but I believe we’re doing a good job. We do take things like this seriously, in the day and age politics is so accessible, the internet is very accessible and it’s easy to like a page, it’s sometimes a matter of quantity of people’s complaints rather than quality.

“We’re ambitious, we all live here and want to improve West Dunbartonshire.”