A TOP council official who played a key role in the independence referendum has been admitted to hospital following a minor accident.
Sue Bruce, chief executive of Edinburgh City Council and depute chief counting officer in the referendum, was due to attend Holyrood's Local Government Committee today to scrutinise the Scottish Government's draft budget.
However, she was replaced at short notice by the council's head of finance Hugh Dunn.
He told the committee: "I would like to convey Sue's apologies to the committee.
"She welcomed the invitation to give evidence and was very much looking forward to giving evidence, but she had an accident last night which meant that she has been detained in hospital."
Committee convener Kevin Stewart said: "We wish her a speedy recovery."
An Edinburgh Council spokeswoman would not reveal the details of the accident but said: "Sue Bruce was admitted to hospital yesterday for a routine procedure following a minor accident.
"She is not expected to be back at work for the remainder of this week. "
Mrs Bruce, who studied at Strathclyde University and Harvard, was chief executive at East Dunbartonshire for four years before moving to Aberdeen in 2008. She was the first public sector leader to get Prince's Ambassador in Scotland Award for "commitment to responsible business".
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article