Across Scotland today a marked feature of rural community life is the realisation that you have to see to your own interests. This is leading to the establishment of Development Trusts and to a range of community ownership initiatives. Three current examples are:

• In Argyll the village of Tayvallich is working to buy out the business which singlehandedly provides it with a shop, cafe and post office.
• In Tweedsmuir in the Borders villagers are raising money to buy the local pub, the Crook Inn, into community ownership.
• Today at Applecross three villagers will walk the eighteen miles across the legendary Pass of the Cattle to highlight their fight to save the petrol pump in the little township. If they cannot do this, the nearest petrol will be eighteen miles away in Lochcarron, across the same dizzying single-track mountain pass.

They say that when the going gets tough the tough get going. Scotland’s rural communities are tough and they’re on the move.

To support this energetic drive for survival and growth, For Argyll has begun to publish a series of articles on Setting up a Development Trust in Scotland.

We would like also to pass on shared information and advice from communities who have already done this or who are in the process of doing it. This can be done by using the ‘Comment’ facility under any article in the series – the first of which is linked above.