PARADISE LOST!
After islanders were handed £7 million to run beautiful Gigha, they are £2 million in DEBT... and their roofs leak!
IT was one of Scotland’s earliest and most high-profile community buy-outs.
When the residents of Gigha took ownership of their island – backed by the taxpayer – they hoped it would create a thriving economy.
However, 17 years and £7 million of public money later, documents reveal that the island is struggling more than ever.
Annual accounts for the trust that runs Gigha show the island off Kintyre is saddled with debts of more than £2 million – and is failing to keep up with repayments.
With senior community figures quitting, there have been warnings that the whole experiment is heading for ‘devastation’.
And, worryingly, the trust has revealed that the island is so short of cash it cannot even afford to fix the housing stock’s leaky roofs.
The latest accounts for the island’s community venture reveal: ‘Cashflow is tight… and the cost of maintaining and repairing housing stock is becoming tougher, resulting in tenanted property now coming into a state of disrepair and at the point of critical in order to maintain wind and water-tight accommodation.’
Last night, John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance campaign group, said: ‘Of course, people should be free to organise their lives as they see fit. But relying on Scottish taxpayers to realise failed pipe dreams is totally indefensible.
‘It’s a strange sort of independence the SNP is pursuing here, encouraging communities like Gigha to live their lives in penury, tied to the public purse.
‘This sort of socialism isn’t working even on a small scale.’
Under previous private owners, Gigha was once described as a ‘shuttlecock for financial speculators’. However, in 2002 islanders bought out leisure park magnate Derek Holt for £4 million, taking control of four farms, a hotel, a quarry and 47 cottages.
The island’s population has grown to 170 and decisions are taken democratically. Houses have been renovated, new businesses – such as the award-winning Wee Isle Dairy – are springing up and there is an annual music festival drawing in tourists.
And the taxpayer is still chipping in with grants, the latest a £53,000 handout from quango Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE).
But the latest accounts for the Isle of Gigha Heritage Trust (IGHT) show that the project is, in fact, teetering.
In 2016, key lender Nationwide issued a Reservation of Rights letter, which gave notice that its £698,000 loan may be recalled at any time – although the building society is waiting to see whether Gigha’s new ten-year financial strategy, produced with the help of HIE, can steady the ship before it takes further action.
The Co-operative Bank recently called in its £462,000 loan to the island’s renewable energy company – which operates four wind turbines – but the hole has been filled by another lender.
Last year, Gigha managed to pay off debts of £170,000 after selling a property on the island back into private ownership, but that ‘did not go far enough to reduce the annual cost of the loans’. Repayments are running at £107,000 a year.
Despite the need for belt-tightening, IGHT’s wage bill has soared from £111,000 to £184,000 as three more locals have gone on the roster, taking the workforce to ten.
Infighting led to Gigha’s chief executive Elaine Morrison quitting her £50,000-a-year role last year after only ten months.
In a parting shot, she wrote in a blog: ‘My job – the one I moved here for, that I saw as a vocation, a labour of love – became intolerable. It was all about human dynamics of the kind that have no other possible outcome than devastation.
‘I was confronting a dogma that saw me as problematic, perhaps a threat to the hegemony of small community politics. The specific difficulties were internal to the organisation I worked for; the wider community I found to be on the whole welcoming and supportive. In order to preserve my mental health and the wellbeing of my family, I felt no option but to tender my resignation.’
Nobody from IGHT was last week available for comment.
A spokesman for the Scottish Government said: ‘The advantages of community ownership can be seen on Gigha, where they have achieved a reversal in population decline, an increase in the school roll and the creation of new business opportunities.’
‘Relying on taxpayers to realise failed pipe dreams’