Herald features divided Coll
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This has been reported in Argyll much earlier but yesterday’s (13th November) Herald newspaper brought the matter to national attention.
Headlined ‘Battle of islanders may Coll off £2.5 million project’, the article features the almost equal division on the island on whether to accept the £852,329 funding won from the Big Lottery for An Cridhe – a new multi-purpose community hall and 12-berth bunkhouse.
The division, on the face of it – and possibly deceptively, seems to be between modernisers and traditionalists.
On one hand, there are those driving to emulate a pattern developed in other communities across Argyll – building new facilities with greater flexibility than the traditional village hall, with sustainable energy values and some economic development capacity.
On the other are those who are concerned that the huge cost of the project – and that is indisputably the case – may be over-optimistic in its ambition and may well leave the 220-strong community (60 of whom are children) with a significant debt long into the future.
The Herald article adds to the understanding of the issue by supplying facts of concern to the opposition. These include the astronomical cost of the land for the new development – £250,000 – and some additional financial anomalies which do seem odd. The cost of ‘external works quoted as £272,000 seems very high, set against the £258,00 cost of building the bunkhouse and the cost of the new hall itself, given as £606,750.
Another issue is the sale of the existing community hall at Arinagour, the main settlement on the island, pictured above. A vote of 78% of those on the electoral roll showed a narrow majority of 47-44 in favour of keeping the old hall. Selling it is key to the financial plan submitted in the Big Lottery bid.
In such circumstances, feelings on both sides run high and this, of course, is fodder for the press. There are allegations that genuine consultation was never enabled and there has been an emailed rubbishing of the opposition as ‘the Brigadoon fraternity’. Alarmed by evidence of community division where it had assumed strong majority support for the project – with islanders and friends having themselves already raised over £66,000 – the Big Lottery has opted for a form of moratorium. The future of An Cridhe is not now assured.
It is worth noting that the ‘opposition’ are not against the building of a new facility. They are concerned about the scale and cost of this one. They have advocated a building costing around £1 million and cite the case of Dalmally on the Argyll mainland as a model.
It is important that a community should not tear itself apart on such matters. In some instances there can be a form of community division where a minority are clearly backward-looking and self-interested to the point of being careless of the common good. In such cases the majority must simply prevail, but without the sort of triumphalism that leaves scores to be settled.
In this instance, though, there is a prima facie case for genuine concerns on costings and there is no evidence of embedded opposition to any development at all.
This would suggest the wisdom of taking advantage of the moratorium on final funding approval – now obtaining with the Big Lottery and with Scottish Natural Heritage – and exploring the issues in a spirit of open-mindedness and open-endedness.
There is no formula for a functional community. It does not depend on resources. It depends on the communal spirit and the sense of adapting, making do and developing together in whatever direction is agreed.
There are communities which have chosen not to follow the trend of building new facilities because the cost – not only the financial cost – to the community would have been too high.
One such is Furnace in Mid-Argyll where an energetic project to build a new hall on the site of the existing one was dropped in favour of a plan to make the best of what is there.
The problem was the small footprint of the current hall – at the centre of the village which, like Coll, is a community of around 220 but with fewer children. This footprint limited the possibilities of a new build. Among other things, it could not deliver the on-site parking required by new facilities capable of supporting major functions such as weddings.
Finding an alternative site would have had two negatives:
- taking the focus of community activity to the periphery of the village or beyond;
- leaving the physical centre of the village – the current hall – prey to redevelopment which, whatever it was, would almost ceftainly change the character of the place.
The Furnace community decided that the irreplaceable strength of the old hall was its centrality and its familiar visual presence at the heart of the village. It is beside the shop and post office and opposite the school and the pub. It is used all the time for all sorts of formal and informal activities. So, un-grand and energy inefficient as it is, it is to be repaired and upgraded as best it can.
No community – Coll or any other – should have its 21st century virility judged by simplistic criteria. Going bald-headed for major new facilities does not, of itself, signal a healthy community.
Furnace is not ‘of the Brigadoon persuasion’. It does not lack resourcefulness and it is far from inactive. This is a small and unpretentious village community with a complex and interesting past. It wants to prioritise its cohesiveness and carry on doing the host of things it does – like the annual Furnace Shut Golf Tournament it holds (a loose term) in Inveraray. It looks to itself for its needs. It is contented rather than complacent. This is not a bad model and Furnace will not be its sole example.
In the end what matters is community spirit and communality. Every community has to find its own route to that. Every member of every community is responsible for contributing to making that possible.The only ‘right’ way is the way almost everyone can sign up to with comfort.
Coll is a great island and a good community. It will find its way out of this without being falsely cast as two sides of a pantomime duel.
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December 17th, 2009 at 9:01 am
[...] the public airing of a bitter split – centred [...]