OPPOSITION councillors have reacted furiously to the cancellation of this month’s meeting of Scottish Borders Council “due to lack of business”.

The full council, comprising 34 salaried members, last met on June 26 and will not now reconvene until September 25 – a three month hiatus.

The scrapping of the meeting scheduled for Thursday, August 28, means that written questions from backbench councillors to senior colleagues in charge of service departments will go unanswered.

And a motion, calling for SBC leader David Parker to demand a better service from ITV Border – heavily criticised over its coverage of the recent Salmond v Darling independence referendum clash – will go undebated.

Councillors received an email yesterday stating that in making the decision to call off the meeting, convener Graham Garvie (Lib Dem, Tweeddale East) was “fully aware that the cancellation...will mean there will have been no council meeting for a period of three months.” The message continues: “That has to be weighed in the balance against the expense and inconvenience of holding meetings with little business to consider.” Councillor Michelle Ballantyne, leader of the Conservative opposition group at SBC, told the Peeblesshire News: “I guess the question ‘what price democracy in this council?’ has been answered by that statement.” She went on: “As the leader of an opposition which was never consulted over this cancellation, I am left questioning what sort of democracy the SNP and Liberals are running.

“Since the 2012 election with the support of Mr Parker they have run the council, lurching from one rushed-through decision to another, removing green waste collections, changing the school week and generally ignoring the views of those they represent on the basis that they know best.” Fellow Tory councillor Gavin Logan said the cancellation of the August meeting had been rumoured for about a month.

“It is now clear that this discredited SNP-led administration is running scared of any debate on questions in the run up to the referendum,” he told us.

Responding yesterday, Councillor Parker said: “There is honestly no sinister or other political reason why the meeting has been cancelled, despite what others may try to invent.

“Historically, the August meeting of the council is very quiet with only a small number of reports to consider and this meeting was cancelled because there were no reports coming forward. There is little point in bringing members in if there is no business to consider.

“The August council meeting comes straight after the summer recess when officers and elected members have annual leave. This year has also been exceptionally busy for our democratic services staff who, as well as running and coordinating all of our office meetings, have had our European elections to deal with in June. They are also running the referendum on 18 September.

“On issues such as the feasibility study for the Great Tapestry of Scotland, the political management review, the arms length social care organisation, the culture trust and a variety of other issues, members have asked specifically for reports to come forward later in the year and officers are working on these pieces of work for our meetings in October, November and December.

“Although the meeting is not taking place this month, the council’s executive, which carries out all the financial monitoring and much of the political governance of the council, will meet next Tuesday and has a number of items on its agenda.” It has emerged that the local authority’s Petitions Committee and Infrastructure Committee meetings, both scheduled for next week, have also been cancelled due to ‘lack of business’.