Scottish Land Fund is helping community businesses to thrive - Cara Gillespie

On the Knoydart peninsula, one of the most isolated parts of Scotland, The Old Forge pub has recently reopened after refurbishment.The pub serves not just the small population that lives here, but visitors who make the seven-mile crossing by boat from Mallaig or who walk for two days over hills and moorland to this remote and beautiful spot.

The Old Forge is owned by the community, who purchased it in 2022 with the help of a grant of £500,000 from the Scottish Land Fund and its beneficial effects have already been felt not just by locals popping in for a pint or walkers stopping off for a bowl of soup, but by the peninsula’s B&Bs and watersports hire operations, who have reported increased trade since the pub doors opened again.

Community-owned businesses like this one may have a tiny impact on Scotland’s economy, but their contribution at grassroots level cannot be overstated and since it reopened to applications in 2021 the Scottish Land Fund (SLF), which is funded by the Scottish Government and delivered in partnership by the National Lottery Community Fund and Highlands and Islands Enterprise, has helped many communities to take ownership of vital assets or areas of land.

Across the country village shops, post offices, hotels and pubs and even, most recently, a cinema have been given the money to buy the premises that have allowed them to safeguard the delivery of vital services.

​The Old Forge pub was purchased by the local community in 2022 (Picture: Andy Buchanan/AFP via Getty Images)

Many of these are businesses that have proved to be commercially unsustainable in the past, but by removing the burden of rent these small-scale operations have the chance to become solvent, allowing them to create local jobs and lessening the impact on the environment by reducing the need to travel miles to post a package or buy a pint of milk.

Through their continued presence, these businesses help to tackle isolation, increase social cohesion and strengthen fragile communities and where the premises have come with living accommodation, this has frequently been refurbished and made available at affordable rent.

This can be of vital importance in areas where second home ownership has priced local people out of the housing market and it can in some cases support the numbers in local schools, helping to protect these from threat of closure.

The social and economic impact of supporting a community to take ownership of what it has identified as key assets can be felt in many ways and at the Fairy Pools on Skye, a percentage of ticket money from a visitor car park, purchased by the local community with an SLF grant in order to accommodate the thousands of tourists who every year flock to see one of the Skye’s most scenic attractions, is being used to subsidise prices for local residents in the community-owned shop.

Cara Gillespie is Chair of the Scottish Land Fund Committee and Chief Executive of the Southern Uplands Partnership

At the Scottish Land Fund we are continually impressed by the sheer tenacity of the groups of volunteers who have worked tirelessly to rescue closed or threatened businesses and to keep them functioning. These enterprises face all the same difficulties that commerce at every level has had to cope with in recent years, from staff shortages and soaring energy bills to supply difficulties. However the groups who operate them continually overcome these obstacles and they have proved time and again that the relatively small sums of money that it takes to support a community business can deliver impressive social, environmental and economic dividends.

Cara Gillespie is Chair of the Scottish Land Fund Committee and Chief Executive of the Southern Uplands Partnership