Glencoe joins Argyll community buyout march with ‘Yes’ vote for hospital

Glencoe Hospital, the former geriatric facility, was closed by NHS Highland in 2008 and, since then, has been boarded up.

The twin forces of distaste for dereliction and a consideration of community needs has led to a proposal for the Glencoe community to buyout the old hospital building under the Scottish Land Reform Act and convert it to a Youth Centre, a conference facility and business workshops.

As is required under the legislation, a community ballot on the proposal has now been held.  2,100 ballot papers were sent out by Highland Council. There was a 56% turnout and 58% voted for the move. The requirement is for a baseline of 50% turnout and for a majority of those voting to be in favour.

Now the outcome of the ballot is to be transmitted to the Scottish government, which will then decide whether there was enough support for the plan to go ahead.

As we have remarked upon much in the past year, Argyll is seeing a growing commitment by communities to the potential of buying out resources too important to their survival as a community to let them decay or to pass into the hands of developers.

We see this as a significant shift in the maturity of communities and citizens alike. The growing willingness of communities to take charge of their own circumstances is politically and socially significant. It signals a greater independence and self confidence, alongside a growing alienation from government at all levels.

Scotland is leading the way in this development, which was initially conceived as a rural phenomenon, with the first community buyout being of the North Assynt estate in Sutherland, followed y the Isle of Eigg and then, at increasing speed by Argyll’s Isle of Gigha, by initiatives in the Western Isles and by an accident prone acquisition of the Isle of Raasay Estate and Raasay House.

Inventive communities then realised that the legislation allowed for the buyout of bricks and mortar as well as land. The first of these was a buyout of a former bank premises in a town in Lanarkshire, giving rein to others, including Tayvallivch in Argyll, where the small lochside community opted to buyout the village shop, post office, petrol station and coffee bar, which was for sale with no takers. Obviously the loss of this combined business would have removed the village’s core services at a stroke.

Currently in Argyll there are buyout’s in train in:

• Kifinan/Tighnabruaich in Cowal – with Kilfinan Community Forest in the last throes of fundraising to buy forest land for mixed-use development by the community; 
• Bute, with the Bute Community Land Company securing a 94% positive vote in the biggest community ballot yet held in Scotland;
• Campbeltown, where the community is mobilising, in what is arguably the most ambitious proposal yet in Scotland,  to buyout the former RAF Machrihanish airbase – which includes the civil airport.

All of the communities at the heart of these previous and present initiatives have had to learn to think and do business, although fuelled by the values of social responsibility that mark our current period of social evolution.

In virtually all cases there were many who pooh-poohed the likelihood of success on the grounds of lack of relevant knowledge and experience. This absolutely misses the point. Whatever knowledge is needed can be acquired, Experience is gathered en route – and these are journeys few have travelled before. 

The one key element that cannot be acquired by decision is enterprise. You have it or you don’t; or you’re susceptible to being infected by it, or you’re not. Without this potential, knowledge and experience will not take you far.

These community buyout initiatives in Argyll speak for a change long necessary. It’s early days and the nay-sayers everywhere are paralysing choirs. But these are interesting times and Glencoe, part of historic Argyll, is now on the move as well.