Community land ‘supergroup’ meets in Outer Hebrides
It could be seen as the land reform equivalent of a musical supergroup with performers from different bands coming together to cut a disc or album.
But those gathering in the Outer Isles will not be bringing guitar riffs or vocal harmonies to a studio. Rather it will be the stories of how they acquired and now manage their local land and assets, a rehearsal with island counterparts.
In the first such get-together on this scale, community landowners from the Northern Isles to Dumfries and Galloway will spend this week in Lewis and Harris, along with some who are trying to follow in their footsteps.
Established headline acts of the community land movement, such as the Gigha Heritage Trust (2002) and North West Mull Community Woodland Company, will be there. So too will be the relative newcomers at Langholm (2020/22), at 10,500 acres the biggest buyout in the south of Scotland, and the island of Ulva (2018).
North Lanarkshire will also be represented by the group that completed the purchase of 171 acres (2020) adjacent to the M8, the biggest buyout to date of urban land in Scotland.
The Outer Hebrides is already “community land central” with just over 50 per cent of the archipelago community owned - the bulk croft land.
The area’s MSP Alasdair Allan welcomed the visiting community bodies, but is calling for “more legal muscle” in the forthcoming land reform bill to ensure one island community, Great Bernera, can buy their island from its landowner.
The object of this week across the Minch is for community trusts to learn from each other and finetune their management approaches. Because although there have been more land and estates coming under community control in recent years, they are spread throughout Scotland.
Unlike neighbouring crofters and farmers, few can look over the fence to see how their neighbours are going about things. You don’t get much of a view of Gigha’s four wind turbines from Langholm’s Tarras
Valley Nature Reserve. Trust representatives will be travelling to meet the community landowners of the 56,000-acre Galson Estate in the north of Lewis. Its near 2,000 residents live in 800 households across 22 crofting townships.
Owners Urras Oighreachd Ghabhsainn (UOG), the Galson Estate Trust, won praise for the way it protected vulnerable residents the Covid pandemic.
They stepped up again when the cost of living crisis hit in past months.
A total of £80,000 was spent supporting residents.
The money comes from three 900kW wind turbines owned by a UOG subsidiary. They earn around £500,000 a year net, money which is invested during entirely in the community. UOG’s chairwoman Agnes Rennie said: “It will give us a chance to learn from communities that are so very different. We all exist to make the land or assets work for our communities, not just for today, but for the future. Development opportunities don’t stand still. We have got to keep refreshing our thinking.”
They will also visit the North Harris Trust (NHT), which manages 64,000 acres of croft land, common grazings and open hill ground including An Cliseam, the highest peak in the Western Isles.
NHT’s main income is commercial leases on the land for the likes of telephone masts and fishfarm shore bases. The deer herd provides the next most important income stream, with leases for shooting.
Mr Allan, MSP for Na h-Eileanan an Iar, said: “The Western Isles has gone from an area where land ownership has historically been concentrated in the hands of a few to the centre of community land ownership in Scotland.
“While most of Scotland rural land is in private hands, more than 75 per cent of people in the Western Isles today live on community-owned land.
“This has empowered many communities to take control of their own futures and ensure the land and resources that sustain them are managed in a way that benefits the community as a whole.”