Waiting times for occupational therapy patients in Orkney are likely to reduce if the service is run jointly by the council and health board.

Councillors at the social work and housing meeting heard on Thursday that there is currently a backlog of people waiting for occupational therapy services.

"We have not been able to meet the demand through a lack of personnel," chairman Councillor Keith Johnson said.

A merger of OT services would mean streamlined services for patients, particularly when discharged from hospital, according to OIC assistant director (community care) Sam McTaggart.

Councillors agreed to recommend the integration of the OT services currently supplied by the OIC and the OHB.

The crime detection rate in Orkney is the highest in Britain - currently sitting at nearly 75 per cent.

Kirkwall Police Inspector Paul Eddington said the Scottish average detection rate of crimes is around 30-40 per cent. “Orkney has the highest detection rate within the Northern Constabulary which has the highest national detection rate.”

The community-style policing operated in Orkney was one factor, he said. “Officers live in the locality where they work and know the people.”

It's official! Orkney beer Skullsplitter is the Champion Winter Beer of Britain.

The strong ale, weighing in at 8.5 per cent, clinched the ultimate prize at the national winter beer festival in Manchester on Thursday.

It beat off competition from beers across the length and breadth of Britain to clinch the top title.

It follows the success of Dark Island – also brewed at the Orkney Brewery in Sandwick – which was voted the champion Scottish beer last November.

Speaking from Manchester on Thursday Orkney Brewery head brewer Rob Hill said: "I'm delighted. We will have to get a bigger office for all the awards."

A Stromness tenants’ association has been awarded a £1,000 grant to improve the town’s Grieveship estate.

The grant will go towards carrying out tree and shrub planting scheme around the playing field at Grieveship.

The Grieveship Tenants’ Association sent a questionnaire to all the residents and a public exhibition identified a number of improvements that folk wanted to see. A lack of colour and planting were two issues that scored highly.

A major study into the prevalence of a potentially deadly cattle disease in Orkney has been given the go ahead after the OIC’s financial assistance towards the cost of the project received European State Aid approval.

The council promised to fund a proportion of the cost of blood testing cattle for Bovine Viral Diarrhoea (BVD) provided that the promoters of the scheme, Orkney Livestock Association (OLA), could sign up 80 per cent of Orkney’s cattle producers to the eradication programme. The group achieved that target, but the OIC’s financial offer to give up to £540,000 over two years, was subject to State Aid clearance from Europe.

Ironically, the announcement that approval had been received for the council’s contribution came on the same day as the Scottish Agricultural College announced that their vet lab in Thurso, where most of the blood samples from Orkney cattle would be tested for BVD, was to close later this year.

Local vets have been surprised by the announcement that the Thurso Veterinary Laboratory is to close later this year and have described it as a “big step backwards for Orkney.”

The news came in a statement issued on Wednesday by the Scottish Agricultural College which runs the centre. They say the closure of the facility which carries out work for vet practices in the North of Scotland including Orkney and Shetland will lead to more efficient use of the available resources.

The college felt that the cost of modernising the post-mortem facilities at the centre in Thurso could not be justified when larger vet labs in Inverness and Aberdeen could meet the demand.

Orkney-based vets say that although routine small samples could be sent by post to any facility, they fear that post-mortems on large farm animals, which could easily and quickly be sent by boat to the vet lab in Thurso, could be a thing of the past under the new system.

The Balfour Hospital in Kirkwall now has the services of its first lay assistant hospital chaplain.

Dr Christine Laird, who came to Orkney in 1992 as the GP for Rousay, Egilsay and Wyre, is the first non-ordained person to hold the post.

Dr Laird says she hopes her appointment will reflect the new approach to chaplaincy work in the hospital.

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Yacht Olympic battles against 50 knot headwinds in the last 15 miles to the finish line Mark Pepper/Marinepics

The Olympic Group yacht which was predicted to be first across the finish line at the end of the Third Leg of the BT Global Challenge Race from Buenos Aires to Wellington, was narrowly beaten by rival yacht LG FLATRON.

Orkney man, Matthew Hunt, whose parents live at Doehouse in Sandwick, was at the helm of the Olympic Group yacht when an unfortunate accident lost them valuable time.

A shredded sail allowed LG FLATRON to sneak by and claim first place crossing the line in Wellington Harbour at 04:53:49 GMT, yesterday, leaving Olympic Group to take second place at 06:52:12 GMT.

Matthew Hunt commented: “It’s nerve-wrackingly close, and I have not slept in 24 hours. It’s been an unbelievably tough leg for all the crews, and I for one have never been so exhausted in my life.”

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Orkney’s newest manufacturing facility is gearing up for production at its recently completed £140,000 factory unit in Kirkwall.

Orkney Glass Fibre and Chemical Company, which has built pleasure craft over the past 16 years, was acquired in May 2000 by local plumbers merchant and electrical wholesaler D. A. G. Kynoch. Until then the two businesses operated next door to each other on the Hatston Industrial Estate but following the acquisition, a complete redevelopment of the site has taken place.

Now trading as Orkney Glass Fibre (OGF), this new division of D. A. G. Kynoch will produce GRP (glass reinforced plastic) boats and specialist one-off products such as water tanks, corporate displays, ventilation products and other specialist mouldings.

A spectacular meteor shower in the Orkney skies on Monday night ended in numerous calls to the coastguard and police from concerned Orcadians.

According to Kirkwall Police Inspector Paul Eddington they received a number of calls from people reporting seeing green flares over the Pentland Firth between 10.30pm and 11pm on Monday night.

However investigations showed that it had been a meteor shower.

“There were reports like the ones in Orkney right the way down the east coast of Scotland,” Inspector Eddington said.

Police are appealing for witnesses to a fire, thought to have been started deliberately, in the public toilets at Dingieshowe at the weekend.

Kirkwall Police Inspector Paul Eddington said a member of the public reported seeing black smoke coming from the toilets at lunchtime on Sunday.

“It seems to have started in the toilet tissue holder in one of the cubicles in the gents’ toilets. We are treating it as deliberate just now,” he said.

They are appealing for anyone in the area at the time, who may have seen anything, to come forward. You can call the police on 872241.

Jobs could go at the North of Scotland Water Authority following this week's announcement that they have to become more efficient and make annual savings of £24 million by five years time.

The efficiency targets were set by the Water Commissioner for Scotland Alan Sutherland. He said NoSWA had to make the savings by 2005/ 2006, with the money being used to help fund a major and much needed investment in the service.