Machrihanish Airbase, minefield of nightmares: Part 1

This is not one story. This is an epic of Sheherazade proportions. Scheherazade told her stories to stay alive each time for one more night. We are telling these stories to protect and keep alive the interests of a community that deserves much better than the lies, let downs, incompetence and blinkered self-interest that threatens to sell short its spirit and its courage.

There is a ‘mother’ story – of the commitment by the Machrihanish Airbase Community Company (MACC) in Kintyre to buy the major asset of the former Ministry of Defence (MoD) airbase, west of Campbeltown on the Mull of Kintyre and to bring it within community ownership.

Within that inspirational ‘mother’ story are a whole series of interconnected horrors, each enough to keep you awake at night in despair at the inability of humanity to put the majority interest first – and indeed, simply, to be honest.

Over the next few days, we will be telling these stories. Today we start with the most urgent.

The HIAL Lease

First, for those who don’t yet know the background, the Ministry of Defence has put on the open market the mothballed site of the former RAF cold war airbase of Machrihanish on the Mull of Kintyre in Argyll.

It is this site that the Machrihanish Airbase Community Company (MACC) is determined to buy to support the sustainability of its community.

Part of the site is the Campbeltown Civil Airport, operated by Highlands and Islands Airports Ltd (HIAL) and it is this that is the subject of the first story of the series.

Before any sale of the site goes through, HIAL is being given a new 10 year lease, with greatly expanded territory.

The Ministry of Defence, in doing this, is acting at the request of the Scottish Government.

This brings into serious question the role and responsibilities of the Scottish Government; and the assurances given to the public meeting in Kintyre by David Olney, the Defence Estates’ disposals man. He assured that meeting that the site would be sold as a whole and that the HIAL lease was not a done deal – indeed, that other operators could be considered.

In terms of Scottish Government involvement, what negates any defence that its action has been driven by the need to protect the continuity of the service is the fact that the new lease is very much more advantageous to HIAL than its existing lease.

Selling agents for the site, Drivers Jonas, say: ‘Notice has now been served on HIAL to terminate their current lease with effect from 31 March 2010. Discussions are ongoing with HIAL in respect of a new lease to run from the date of termination.’

This does not say why HIAL has been asked to terminate it’s existing lease; what date was on that lease; or what the terms of the new lease are intended to be.

We understand that the intended new lease:

• gives HIAL a territory well beyond the coverage of its existing lease;
• recognises that HIAL intend to shorten the airport’s unusually long runway;
• confers a 10 year period upon HIAL.

This proposal does two things of serious concern:

• it amends – post publication and without informing prospective buyers – the nature and definition of the site offered for sale on the open market
• it leaves any buyer – and very particularly, a potential buyer which is one of the Scottish Government’s own communities intent on pulling itself up by its own efforts – with a crippled and degraded asset.

Shortening the runway (a site USP) precludes options a buyer might be interested to explore. Extending the territory governed by a lease removes land from the new buyer’s deployment. Ten years is a long time.

We find the language used in the Drivers Jonas statement a little unusual – ‘Notice has now been served on HIAL to terminate their current lease with effect from 31 March 2010.’ This suggests that the current lease had longer to run and could possibly have been left to negotiation with an incoming buyer. The purchase date set for the property is, after all, 11th August 2010.

Why the hurry? Why does HIAL, as the airport operator, need or want more land and more freedom than it currently has? Why is it being allowed what is little more than a looting operation?

In a small country, uncomfortable juxtapositions are difficult to avoid and this is no exception.

• Transport Minister, Stewart Stevenson appointed David Sutherland to the Chairmanship of the Board of HIAL on 16th March 2007. Mr Sutherland was Executive Director of Tulloch Limited and his family has the controlling interest in Tulloch Homes, a major player in Scotland’s construction industry.
• Rok, a UK provider of development, building and maintenance services had acquired Tulloch Construction for £31.3 million in October 2006.
• David Sutherland became a Non-Executive Director of Rok and was welcomed by Rok’s CEO, Garvis Snook ,saying: ‘We’re delighted to welcome Tulloch to the Rok family and in particular David Sutherland, with his wealth of experience and relationships in Scotland’.
• Tulloch was locally known to have an interest in development on the Machrihanish site.
• On 31st January 2009, David Sutherland stood down from his role at HIAL ‘due to time commitments associated with his business interests’.
• Early in 2009, the MoD made it known that it was to dispose of the former RAF Machrihanish and this went ahead through Drivers Jonas.
• Rok is now the contractor delivering the major extension at Machrihanish for Skykon, the go ahead wind turbine manufacturer which, by the end of this year, will have tripled production at the plant.
• HIAL is now in the process of acquiring a new 10 year lease at Campbeltown Airport, with a territory significantly expanded, compared with its current lease.

The obvious, the cleanest option for the MoD was simply extending the HIAL lease, securing the continuity of the service, giving the operator transitional security and allowing an incoming buyer to negotiate their own preferred circumstances.

Had it granted HIAL a new lease on the existing terms, even with a 10 year tenure – that would have been relatively uncontentious.

To contemplate issuing a new 10 year lease in very different terms of the sort we describe above is highly contentious and more than a little unsettling. It smacks of the sort of Tammany Hall opportunism that disgraces the public sector.

The only acceptable outcome to this situation is the immediate withdrawal of the proposed new lease and its replacement, should it be necessary, with a one year extension of the existing HIAL lease.

We are asking:

• Transport Minister, Stewart Stevenson MSP
• Argyll’s directly elected representatives Alan Reid MP and Jim Mather MSP
• Jamie McGrigor and his fellow Highlands and Islands MSPs,
• Leader of Argyll and Bute Council, Councillor Dick Walsh

all of whom have responsibilities for Argyll, to make immediate contact with both the MoD / Defence Estates and with HIAL (as we too have done), to urge a halt to the planned new lease; and to issue a one year extension of the current contract as a holding operation.

Tomorrow’s story will deal with issues around the business of valuing the site.

Here are links to other parts of this investigative series:

• Machrihanish airbase – minefield of nightmares: Part 2
• Machrihanish airbase – minefield of nightmares: Part 3
• Machrihanish airbase – minefield of nightmares: Part 4