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November Update

• Several further meetings with the Scottish Government have taken place and we are still working towards obtaining final approval of the appointment of the Private Sector Development Partner. 
• Bids have been received from the five shortlisted Design Team candidates and bid evaluation has commenced.   It is anticipated that bid evaluation will be concluded by the end of November. 
• Initial site investigations on identified sites in and around Balivanich have been completed and three potential sites have been shortlisted.  A meeting is scheduled to be held with the Balivanich School Parent Council to obtain their views on the selected sites.
• Work is ongoing on costing the various Nicolson Institute options with a view to presenting an initial report to the Comhairle December meeting. 
• The inaugural meeting of the Project Board of the Special Purpose Vehicle was delayed due to travel difficulties and has been rescheduled for the end of November.  Two Independent Directors have been selected and will officially take their place on the Board at the inaugural meeting.
• It is expected that the name of the project will be changed from “PPP” to Western Isles Schools Project (WISP) in order to reflect the fact that it is not a standard PPP project.  This proposal will go to the December meeting of the Education Committee.
• A party of five head teachers, four specialist subject teachers, a pre-school representative and a school technician visited a variety of mainland schools accompanied by the Comhairle’s education advisers and a representative from the Technical Services Department.  This gave them a practical view of positive and negative elements of both new build and refurbished primary and secondary school.  The intention is that their ongoing input to the schools project will be informed by this experience.  An initial report from the visits is being prepared by the education advisers and is expected to be presented to the project team on 21 November.