The Campbeltown Courier is reporting that, because of what are described as ‘minor infringements’ of the procedure in conducting the community ballot, the Scottish Government has set aside the community right to buy the former RAF base at Machrihanish, near Campbeltown.
At the same time, it appears that the Government has nevertheless left in place the community company’s registered interest in the property.
This seems something of a judgment of Solomon.
The Machrihanish Airbase Community Company (MACC) is unable to proceed and is effectively returned to square one – and the Ministry of Defence is unable to sell the property to anyone else without first giving MACC the option to buy it.
The tenour of the report is that this is seen as offering comfort to MACC, buying the company time to accept the Scottish Government’s offer of help to recover its right to buy.
MACC is obviously prepared to do whatever it takes to succeed in its ambition to acquire this significant resource and to develop it in the interests of copper-fastening Campbeltown as a sustainable community.
There can be no doubt that the company will find and deploy to its advantage the silver linings in this temporary blip in its progress.
It is worth pointing out that while many of the minor infringements cited relate to different lengths of time available to voters to get their votes in, the overall vote was a record 67.35% of the community constituency concerned.
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