As Rum community votes in ownership, Morvern looks to community buy out

Islanders on the biggest of the Small Isles, Rum- all 17 adults – voted yesterday by 15-2 to take £15million of buildings and land into community ownership. This includes the community hall, village shop, tea room, campsite and land in Kinloch Village and Glen on the island’s west coast.

Government conservation agencies have owned the island since 1957. The Nature Conservancy Council transferred it to Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) in 1992.

The land transferred to the community is intended to enable the creation of the first crofts on Rum – up to five of them – helping to build a sustainable community and extending its size.

Alongside this development, the 300 residents of the Morvern peninsula, part of historical Argyll, are themselves considering a community buy out of land to enable them to secure the future of thier fragile community.

The end of 2008 saw 11 jobs lost as Tarmac shut down the 63 year-old Lochaline silica sand mine. These jobs represent 20% of the commmunity’s working population – a very serious economic blow.

The area’s new Community Council is setting about radical approaches to creating greater stability for the vulnerable community, looking at crofting, small business creation and affordable housing as a triple-pronged way forwards.

Making sense of this may involve a community buy out of land, not necessarily a single large land area but perhaps several smaller packets.

At the moment the community is in the research phase, studying the Land Reform Act, the Crofting Reform Act and the Forest Land Scheme to help them clarify their options and the thresholds they need to cross.

With The Herald yesterday (14th January) leading a campaign to prune Scotland’s 32 local authorities to 10 – a move championed by Tom McCabe and known, in some form, to be under consideration by the Scottish Government, community buy outs are increasingly relevant.

Changes will not happen overnight and, as in the turkeys not voting for Christmas cliche, we can expect any proposals to be fiercely resisted by every local authority in the country.

But we may well be on the edge of a progressive movement towards a smaller and much more cost-efficient local government system, backed up by far greater community self-government. The acceptance of responsibility and the growth of skills and authority coming from community buy-outs are a part of that new picture.

It may well be that the proposed re-structuring of Argyll’s community council’s into larger area councils is part of this developing scenario. If it is, its ends may be achieved by a less flawed notion than the current one.

The top photograph is of A’ Bhrìdeanach Point on Rum looking east to Bloodstone Hill, by Tony Page. The lower picture is of Lochaline by Martin Southwood. Both are reproduced here under the Creative Commons license.