Challenges ahead as Gigha's residents get down to business

Published on Thursday 13 February 2003 00:00

IN THE shadows of Achamore Gardens, the perfectly manicured grounds on the Isle of Gigha created by former landowner Sir James Horlick, roams a golden pheasant.

According to legend, this startling and obsequious bird, whose feathers glint yellow and red as it stalks the walled gardens of Achamore, is the phoenix of Greek mythology. Fabled to have lived for 500 years, at the end of that time the phoenix was believed to burn itself to ashes before rising again, glorious in renewed beauty and immortality.

Were it not too neat or perhaps too twee an analogy, it would be fitting that such a bird inhabits Gigha, an island whose entire way of life has had to rise anew over the past 11 months.

Gigha might never have been reduced to ashes, but to Alan Hobbett, the island’s development manager and the man charged with turning it into a profit-making and valid enterprise, the challenge is just as monumental.

"It doesn’t stop with ownership," Hobbett says. "We’ve got to raise a substantial amount of money to invest in the local economy."

It is almost one year since the Isle of Gigha, population 107, was bought by the island’s residents for 4 million. It was arguably the most publicised community land buyout of all time, and certainly the most expensive. During those heady months leading up to 15 March 2002 - when the islanders famously declared a "a new dawn" had broken over Gigha - documentary crews, journalists and Wendy Alexander descended upon the island, demanding to know who was in charge, where the money was coming from and just how long the idyll would last.

Now the dust has well and truly settled. The initial elation felt over the buyout has long since dissipated and reality, along with some grim economic conditions, has set in.

Much has been written about whether a residents’ land buyout is a viable way forward for rural communities in Scotland. The answer could lie in the people heading the Isle of Gigha Heritage Trust, the charitable body that now runs the island.

The Trust’s board, which includes a fisherman, a head teacher and the ferry skipper , considers proposals for the improvement and advancement of Gigha. It is chaired by the charismatic and outspoken Willie McSporran, who has, in 60 odd years on the island, clearly gained the respect of its inhabitants.

"Towards the end there was tremendous support, but it wasn’t like that in the beginning," he says, settling into a chair in the lounge of the Gigha Hotel, the heartbeat of the island which comprises its largest tourist accommodation, its only bar, and, out back, Hobbett’s office.

Indeed, when the islanders first met to discuss the possibility of a buyout, only 14 people were in favour. Winning support for the scheme was a slow and grinding process of convincing, cajoling and community grit. "If there hadn’t been that support I wouldn’t have been so happy." he says. "It was a lot of work."

While the trust presides at the top of the Gigha tree, Hobbett, appointed by the trust following the buyout, is charged with a lot of the day-to-day management. He is, people will pull you aside to tell you, "brilliant". A number of representatives of Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE), including Duncan Baird, one of its Scottish Land Fund Advisors, also spend time on the island. HIE has also made its own appointment to the trust’s board in Lorne MacLeod.

There is also a seperate trading company which takes responsibility for the hotel, self-catering cottages, an airstrip, and other functions regarded as trading activities.

It is an unusual system for running a community, and one that was brought into being only because of the equally unusual way that the buyout was funded.

Money for Gigha came from two sources. The primary tranche of 3.5 million was provided by the Scottish Land Fund, formed last year with 10 million from the New Opportunities Fund, itself an arm of the National Lottery. The balance was a 500,000 grant from HIE. Of the 3.5 million from the SLF, 2.5 million of it was a grant. The rest - 1 million - must be paid back within two years.

So far, the community has raised 115,000. There have been ceilidhs, a successful music festival, sponsored walks, sponsored rows, sponsored diets, sponsored haircuts. As Andy Oliver, a board member who along with his wife Viv runs the island post office, puts it: "We’re suffering from a little fund-raising fatigue."

A Gigha tartan has been created by Johnstons’, and a batch of special edition Gigha whisky, bottled by Springbank distillery in Campbeltown, has been auctioned off for around 5,000.

The serious money will come from the sale of Achamore House, the laird’s residence on the island, which has lain empty since the buyout last year. There has been interest from three separate buyers, and an offers over price of 600,000 is being advertised. "If we don’t reach a conclusion by the spring then the intention is to put it on the open market," says Hobbett.

"There’s no immediate hurry for the sale, we have till 15 March next year."

But while the islanders have a year’s more grace to pay back the debt, the day-to-day subsistence of the island is a more pressing issue, and one that has kept Hobbett, McSporran and the board awake many a night.

"We recognise that we’ve got to pay back 1 million, but we’ve got to raise substantially more." Hobbett says.

Housing is a huge and immediate problem. A recent survey showed that three quarters of the trust’s housing falls into the statutory definition "below tolerable". Most of the remaining properties are classified "in serious disrepair".

"The biggest inhibiting factor that we always come up against is housing." says Baird. "We simply have no houses."

This has been partly alleviated by Fyne Homes, which has bought land next to the hotel and will start work on eight houses in the spring. Further projects are in the works and plans for a construction company based on the island are also under consideration.

Outside the hotel, three patches of mud promise to become the island’s first craft units. Interest has been intense, and it is hoped they will be filled this summer, bringing in both revenue for the tenancy, and increased tourism and trade to the island. There is talk of a microbrewery, which could bring in serious potential revenue as well as allowing the "Gigha brand" to make its way on to shelves across the country.

Since the buyout, a number of SMEs have sprung up, including publisher Ardminish Press, run by Freddy Gillies (see panel). Neil Bannatyne and partner Maggie Chapman, who moved to the island not long after the buyout last year so that Bannatyne could take over his father’s croft, are attempting to set up a horticultural business.

They have planted a number of vegetables in a corner of their 24 acre plot, which they are hoping they will be able to sell locally. It is a brave initiative when one considers that the whole of Kintyre has its vegetables imported from Glasgow, none being grown locally.

Jim Alexander has gone a step further. He has come up with an idea that could, he says, revolutionise shallow-water mussel farming.

"A mussel farm would normally cost around 250,000 to set up," he says, "But I believe I’ve worked out a cheap process that could allow us to harvest shallow-water mussels for a fraction of that."

Alexander has had his idea approved by a number of experts, and is currently in the process of applying for both a patent and a grant, which would allow him to set up an experimental system.

If successful, the farm would allow the trust to produce cheap local mussels, and sell on the system to other small communities. Alexander himself will make no profit from the project. Most agree that before the buyout, such ventures would not have been possible.

Gillies is one of a number of islanders who have gone on three-day business start-up courses run by Argyll and Islands Enterprise (AIE), and a number have also obtained small start-up grants.

Both HIE and AIE remain intensely involved in the island’s development but such - dependence could be dangerous. An island that leans too much on the enterprise companies for both funds and management could end up simply swapping one type of landlord for another.

Perhaps partly for this reason, no stone has been left unturned when it has come to looking for increased revenue. Some of the island’s more traditional earners, such as farming, are being closely scrutinised for modernisation. "All the milk produced on the island is sold to First Milk every day, which comes with a tanker and visits the three farms." says Hobbett.

"But every day it leaves half empty, which poses the question of viability."

The trust is now advertising for tenants for Achamore farm, the "home farm" of the island. This would bring daily production on the island up to 1.8 million litres a year, and could lead the quartet of farms in a number of different directions.

"We could switch to beef," says Kenny Robison, the trust’s vice-chairman and one of the island’s three dairy farmers. "But it would mean increasing a herd of around 80 cows to around 120." This has its own problems, but at the same time, Robison says, it could offer more returns.

The current crisis in the fishing industry has not left Gigha unscathed either, and one of the cruellest twists of the buyout was that Gigha’s fish farm, which employs nine workers, is one of the chunks of land that Derek Holt, the previous landowner, refused to sell to the community. The annual rent paid by the fish farm company, AquaScot, to Holt, is substantial.

The fishermen on the island, including Archie MacAlister, whose wife Lorna is the head teacher at the island school and sits on the board, are realistic about their prospects. "I’ll stay in fishing as long as I can," he says. "But I’ve never known a year as bad as this one."

The fragility of such industries has forced Hobbett to turn to ever more inventive ways of raising funds. One of his most radical ideas is that of turning Gigha into a plc. It is a complex and ambitious concept, and, if it works, could lift Gigha out of its precarious financial situation and permanently into the black. It revolves around the idea of a separate entity - Gigha plc - in which both individuals and institutions can buy shares.

The idea also involves that most en vogue of island initiatives - renewable energy. A feasibility study has already been carried out on Gigha marking it down as a perfect place for a wind farm. Hobbett believes investors in Gigha plc could provide money for perhaps two wind turbines, which would then generate a good rate of return. The trust would benefit by leasing the land the turbines stand on to the plc. Another similar plan revolves around investment in a number of properties on the island.

Gigha is very much a work in progress. But treat it like a company, and suddenly, it starts to make sense. It went through a management buyout, funded by investment from a number of different bodies. It recruited a new manager, appointed a board that knows the business well, and started looking at diversification.

It is attending to areas that were ignored by the previous owner, such as housing, and is examining radical new projects like renewable energy. It is in the midst of selling off its most lucrative assets, and examining how it can maximise returns on such a sale. Its future now depends on the ability to operate like a private company that must respond to needs and react to economic conditions .

Gigha is a beautiful place. Dazzling white beaches jostle for space with aqua blue glistening waters. The island sits in the gulf stream, making the weather unseasonably warm for the time of year. Snow almost never falls here, and outside the Gigha hotel, a palm tree unfurls softly in the breeze.

It is an island where old traditions persist, where residents rarely lock their doors, keys are left in cars, and no-one can walk down the street without stopping to chat. Yet it is at the forefront of one of the most modern concepts of our time, that of community landownership, and it is using every trick in the book in order to make it viable.

Back at the hotel, the bar is filling up. Fishermen, fresh off the boats, exchange banter while locals mill around, trading stories of the day’s business, arranging council and board meetings, inquiring about the latest fundraising projects.

"People grasped the opportunity and took the risk to purchase the island." says Hobbett. "But everything takes time. The intention, the feasibility, the viability, securing the funds, getting in the investment. Executing all that will take time. But we’re getting there."