Army base purchase shows 'right to buy' applies to more than just crofts

Published on Monday 8 October 2007 00:28

COMRIE Development Trust has completed its purchase of the former Cultybraggan army camp from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) - using the community right-to-buy provisions of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003. This is a major breakthrough, which brings a great sense of achievement not just to the local community but to all proponents of the community right-to-buy legislation.

Cultybraggan Camp, located on the outskirts of Comrie in Perthshire, was established during the Second World War as a prisoner of war (PoW) camp for high-level German prisoners.

The PoW buildings are still standing, but most recently the camp was used as a training centre for a number of groups, including the Territorial Army. The 90-acre camp could house 600 people. In the late 1980s, it was decided a new bunker for the Regional Headquarters for Scotland would be built at Cultybraggan. However, by the time the facility was completed in 1990, the Cold War had ended and the bunker was deemed surplus to requirements. The bunker would have been the government headquarters for Scotland in the event of major conflict and would have housed the secretary of state for Scotland, as well as the BBC and other organisations.

One of the key objectives of the legislation - in facilitating acquisition of land by the local community - is to allow the community to take forward new opportunities that were difficult, if not impossible, to unlock in the past due to lack of access to the land needed to accommodate these projects. The argument was that there was no shortage of ideas within local communities about what could be done to promote regeneration and make the community stronger and more sustainable. Certainly, the Cultybraggan project has borne that out: the consultations with the local community have thrown up a wide range of innovative ideas for use of the site.

A development trust has taken these various possibilities on board and is now developing the detail. The guiding principle is that the project should reflect best practice in sustainable development and should be focused on the provision of new community facilities for the benefit of surrounding area.

While the development trust is in one sense only at the start of a process, it has already come a long way in purchasing the site. The community right-to-buy legislation has very specific requirements as regards the structure of a body that can exercise the right-to-buy and the procedures to be followed in doing so. Burness, acting as legal advisers to the development trust, had to tailor the overall legal framework to take account of the special demands of the project, while respecting the key principles of community ownership and control.

The legislation also required the development trust to carry out ballots among the local community to ensure there was sufficient support for the purchase. This was taken forward in parallel with the wider consultation processes with the local community. The effect is that the community now has a real sense of ownership of the proposals and, while not every idea put forward could be adopted, the community also has a clear understanding of the challenges facing the development trust in balancing some of the aspirations of the community with the need for financial sustainability.

The community right-to-buy legislation was originally intended to give further impetus to crofting and island communities wanting to buy out absentee landlords. The purchase by the development trust is a prime example of how other rural communities are seeing the potential of the legislation for unlocking other possibilities.

The purchase by the trust follows upon the earlier ground-breaking purchase - again through community right-to-buy, and again involving legal support from Burness - of former bank premises in Neilston, Renfrewshire.

This was the first occasion on which the legislation had been used in a semi-urban context; and is recognised as a pathfinder project in its own right - highlighting the fact that the opportunities opened up by the right-to-buy legislation are not restricted to rural communities.

As the development trust movement in Scotland gathers more momentum, we are likely to see more and more communities taking active steps to breathe new life into towns and villages through these new initiatives.

• Stephen Phillips is a partner and Graeme Palmer is an associate at Burness.