Community buy-outs make £1m. After the taxpayer gives them £2m
SCOTLAND’S ‘community buy-out’ schemes made £1 million profit last year – but only thanks to hand-outs of public cash worth £2 million.
In the past two decades, dozens of islands and estates have been bought from private owners and taken into community control – often with financial help from the taxpayer.
A new analysis by The Scottish Mail on Sunday shows some schemes have become commercially successful – while others remain entirely dependent on support from grants from the public purse.
According to their most recent annual accounts, Scotland’s major buy-outs in total recorded profits of £1.2 million. However, the accounts show that, over the same period, the schemes received around £2.1 mildetailed lion overall in publicly-funded grants. The findings come in the week SNP ministers handed out a further £2.1 million to 11 communities to help them purchase land.
This year’s Scottish budget also committed an extra £10 million to its Scottish Land Fund.
Eben Wilson, director of the economic policy institute the Centre for Democratic Prosperity, said: ‘What is disturbing is that there appears to be no strategy for dealing with failing enterprises other than tipping in even more good money after bad.’
The Mail on Sunday analysed the latest accounts of the 24 buy-outs of 100 acres or more that provide books, most of which receive public grants. Only ten returned profits though the accumulated surplus amounted to £1.28 million – compared with £1.23 million the previous year. But that was on the back of taxpayer support of at least £2.18 million – up from £2.11 million.
West Ardhu and Langamull Woodlands on Mull made £398,589 in 2014/15 with taxpayer backing of less than £54,000. Meanwhile, the Comrie Development Trust made profits of £142,008 – £100,000 more than the public funding it received.
Other successful returns were achieved by the former RAF base at Machrihanish in Argyll, which has been converted into a business park, and the West Harris Trust which has created several small enterprises.
But the majority of buy-outs are making losses, among them the 93,000-acre South Uist Estate (-£417,917), Eigg (-£105,210) and the Galson Estate on Lewis (-£63,932).
As we revealed last month, the island of Gigha is now selling parcels of residential development land back into private hands in a bid to stay afloat. Despite the losses, ministers still aim to double the amount of land in community ownership to a million acres by 2020.
A Scottish Government spokesman said: ‘We want communities to be able to shape the decisions that affect their lives. They will face challenges, but we are giving them the opportunity to succeed.’