The case studies in this volume describe projects undertaken by a range of groups and
organisations: a private initiative (Corrary); a second private initiative working with a
conservation organisation (Loft and Hill of White Hamars); community-led groups (Abriachan
and Birse); a consortium comprising a community group, a conservation organisation and a
local authority (Eigg); a partnership between a conservation organisation and local
communities (Balmacara); a partnership between a community-based group and a public sector
organisation (Laggan); and a partnership of public sector organisations with community
representation (Kinlochleven).
Origins of the Initiatives
The projects which the case studies describe have come about in different ways. As with
the case of Assynt which is described in Volume One, two were a response to a turn of
events or possible turn of events which posed a specific threat to the interests of local
people. Christine Matheson traces the origins of Abriachan Forest Trust to the loss
of access and other rights which could have resulted from the sale of nearby Forest
Enterprise (FE) plantations. Stephen Booth describes how the Kinlochleven Land
Development Trust was formed to address the urgent need to build a new economic
infrastructure for Kinlochleven in the face of the imminent closure of the aluminium
smelter on which virtually all local livelihoods had depended for almost a century.
In contrast, Camille Dressler describes how the people of Eigg have responded
not to threat, but to the opportunity to participate as equal partners in the future
development of the island.
The other social landowners whose activities are documented here may not be able to
point to such clear-cut stimuli, for their initiatives are responses to more insidious
forms of threat. Robin Callander describes how the community of Birse responded to
the withdrawal of the support it had received in the past and the possibility of future
constraints on its social and economic opportunities which would result from the lack of
clear agreements about rights over the largest woods in the parish, important both as
local economic assets and as part of the national natural heritage.
The other projects described in the case studies are responses to perceptions of the
unsatisfactory nature of prevailing patterns of land use and land management. They
document attempts to find alternatives to practices which are either failing to provide
adequate returns in the form of environmental, economic and social benefits, or worse
still are plainly unsustainable - involving as they do the depletion of natural assets,
the decline of social and economic opportunities, and the undermining of once self-reliant
communities.
The community of Laggan first took steps to counter the impact of unsustainable forms
of land use in the late 1970s. Roy Tylden-Wright’s account reviews the Laggan
Forest Partnership - latest and most ambitious in a chain of community initiatives by
which the people of Laggan have tried to counter the loss of jobs and arrest the decline
in population and so ensure the survival of their community.
Two more case studies document work on forms of land management free of the costs which
current practices in sheep farming impose on plant communities and wildlife populations
and also on economic opportunities in many parts of the Highlands and Islands. Roy Harris
and Mary Jones (at Loft and the Hill of White Hamars in Orkney) and the Corrary
Partnership (in Lochalsh in the West Highlands) each purchased land to create an
opportunity, matched in community terms only by the buy-outs at Assynt, Borve, Eigg and
Knoydart, to develop practices which meet sustainability criteria.
In another case study Iain Turnbull describes how at Balmacara, not very far
from Corrary, a very different project group representing the National Trust for Scotland
(NTS) acted on perceptions that the management of land and property on the trust’s
estate was failing to address the full range of environmental, economic and social needs
in this part of Lochalsh.
Achievements
The case studies not only reflect the diversity of the sector, but also document its
achievements. Abriachan Forest Trust, having succeeded in buying Forest Enterprise
(FE) plantations, has secured funding for the removal of non-native species, involved
local people in practical work in the forest and drawn up plans for the development of
both the economic and amenity potential of the wood. It was the first major community
buy-out of a state forest in the United Kingdom.
At Kinlochleven a public-private-community partnership has been established to help
create new opportunities and diversity in a factory village that was once totally
dependent on a multi-national company for its employment and social provision. The Kinlochleven
Land Development Trust has accessed funding totalling almost £8 million and completed
Phase 1 of its programme to convert industrial buildings to new uses and to make
significant environmental improvements to the village.
After three years of protracted negotiations, Birse Community Trust has reached
a complex legal agreement which safeguards the ancient land use rights over the Forest of
Birse Commonty, an area extending to some 3,500 hectares. This landmark agreement has
enabled the trust to secure access and management rights for the common benefit of all the
residents of the parish and to obtain funding to manage woodland and renovate
water-powered woodmills.
In its first eighteen months The Isle of Eigg Heritage Trust has addressed
issues of facilitating community participation, completed its first new building which
provides accommodation for three different businesses, addressed the issue of security of
tenure, developed a management plan which includes a housing repair strategy, and made an
application for a Forestry Authority Woodland Grant Scheme.
Since it was formally established in 1998 the Laggan Forest Partnership has
allowed the Laggan Forest Trust to create local jobs and play a significant role in the
joint management and development of Strathmashie Forest. Together the two partners have
secured a large grant from the Millennium Forest Trust for Scotland which will allow the
forest to be developed in a way which will integrate economic and environmental
objectives. It is one of the first Joint Forest Management Schemes in the United Kingdom.
Over a much longer time scale Roy Harris and Mary Jones have developed grazing regimes
at Loft and the Hill of White Hamars which have increased the biodiversity of
different types of heaths and grasslands. With their low capital costs and income from
agri-environment payments, these regimes represent what could be a more financially viable
system than conventional commercial hill sheep farming. It is an outstanding example of
conservation-based farming involving a private-voluntary sector partnership.
At Corrary the partnership has begun the work of long-term ecological
restoration which it is intended will support both economic activity and an enlarged
community in the years to come. It has also succeeded in demonstrating the viability of
new land-based enterprises - a tree nursery, organic horticulture, a timber supply
business and a renewable energy consultancy.
In close consultation with the people of the area, the National Trust for Scotland
(NTS) has carefully developed plans to provide new housing and workshops units, create new
crofts and enable community participation in the management of existing woodland. Together
the innovations represent a major investment in the social and economic infrastructure of
the Balmacara area.
Continuing Progress
Several of the projects have made significant progress since the case studies were
written. At the time of writing (January 2000) Birse Community Trust (BCT) has been
operating for nine months as a community enterprise promoting the common good of the
inhabitants of Birse parish on Deeside. In that relatively brief period it has taken on
the management of 600 hectares of native pinewoods, 12 hectares of community woodlands, a
small school woodland, three water-powered woodmills, and the land around the parish war
memorial. BCT is also concluding an agreement with Forest Enterprise that will give it a
direct say over the management of a 240 hectare plantation in the parish. These are only
some of BCT’s main land-based projects in an expanding number, and increasing
diversity, of initiatives. The trust has also, for example, re-published an out-of-print
history of the parish. For its achievements BCT was declared winner of the ‘Community
Business of the Year’ section of the 1999 Scottish Community of the Year Awards.
By December 1999, the Isle of Eigg Heritage Trust had secured three-year funding
for the Project Officer’s job and for the post of part-time administrator from the
National Lottery’s “Awards for All” scheme. New sub-committees have been
set up, notably one on community development, which organised a well-attended training
workshop on assertiveness and communication. This sub-group is to carry out a skills audit
and recommend ways of implementing and monitoring progress, which will give one or more of
the islanders the opportunity to learn administration and project management skills
alongside the Project Officer. The forestry programme started on schedule and the first
phase - fencing - was completed in record time in preparation for the second phase - of
chipping and path laying - scheduled to start in January 2000. Six people are currently
employed, and have successfully completed chainsaw and machinery-operating training. In
addition, a new subsidiary company has been created to carry out building work, and will
employ four people. By leasing one property on holiday lets, the trust has also allowed a
group of islanders to form a partnership to expand tourism on the island. These
developments illustrate the trust’s continuing capacity to carry out an enabling role
successfully.
There has also been much activity at Abriachan, where Jim Wallace, the Deputy
First Minister of the Scottish Parliament, launched the White Paper on Land Reform,
“Proposals for Legislation”, in August 1999. The car park at Achpopuli has been
completed, and the family trees area has been developed and planted. Over 46,000 native
trees have been planted in the forest, giving some employment to local students. Work on
footpath construction and deer fence removal has been progressing steadily, providing more
employment opportunities for local people. 12 members of AFT have been trained in chainsaw
use, and 9 members have completed Health and Safety training. Members of AFT have also had
training in the use of computer software and made good use of community computer and other
office equipment for preparing presentations and other purposes. Over the summer months
the senior members of the Active Abriachan group constructed the first rain shelter - a
replica of a Bronze-age hut - and won first prize in a national competition - the BP
Grizzly and Gruff Environmental Challenge - for their work. AFT has also produced a
calendar, with the theme of the natural history of Abriachan, and is due to publish a
book; “Abriachan: a history of an upland community” in June 2000. Members
interested in the educational potential of the forest have developed their OUTREECH
project as part of the Millennium Forest for Scotland Award, encouraging schools and
community groups to visit the forest and take part in a programme of interesting woodland
activities. They were assisted during the summer of 1999 by the junior members of Active
Abriachan, who provided a junior ranger service, and won first prize for their
presentation at the BP Grizzly and Gruff Environmental Challenge finals. OUTREECH is
currently organising a forest festival which will take place in September 2000. Members
have attended various courses on interpretation, and have now finalised the interpretation
strategy. The construction of interpretation boards is currently underway.
At Balmacara the NTS has secured the funding it needed. Building work began in
January 2000 and will be finished it is hoped within a year. The Statutory Township
Reorganisation proposals are with the Scottish Executive and it is hoped that the new
crofters will have access to the land by the end of May. Funding has been secured from the
Millennium Forest for Scotland Trust for a project to complete a natural regeneration
scheme, remove invasive non-native species and improve access. At Corrary the
partnership has registered with FE its interest in managing adjacent woodland.
Creating Economic Benefits
The initiatives described in the case studies may vary in many ways (for example in
length of existence, legal status, main objectives, size of landholding, assets and income
and management practices), but certain themes recur - for example, ensuring accountability
and facilitating participation through democratic structures; the practical difficulties
of applying for, drawing down and being accountable for grant aid; the need for long-term
development support and assistance; obtaining the kind of specialist assistance which
meets social landowners’ particular needs; the difficulties of adjusting to new roles
and of building capacity to meet new challenges; the need to measure social and
environmental benefits in some way which allows them to be included in the
accountants’ ‘bottom line’.
The dominant theme, however, is the creation, or restoration, of economic opportunities
within an environmentally sustainable framework. The case studies demonstrate that the
commitment to bringing about tangible improvements is very real, and that the benefits
which have been secured are considerable. Not all social landowners can hope, or indeed
would wish, to operate on the scale of the Kinlochleven Land Development Trust, but
smaller benefits are important. Even a small number of new jobs and businesses in places
like Abriachan, Balmacara, Birse, Corrary, Eigg and Laggan are very significant additions,
particularly when seen against long-established downward trends in many communities of
similar size and remoteness.
Ways and Means
To deliver benefits - whether democratic, social, environmental or economic - social
landowners and aspiring social landowners need to be able to purchase land or negotiate
access agreements, develop land use and land management policies, and draw up and
implement more detailed plans. However they cannot achieve these primary objectives
without first engaging in a range of activities: preparation and social mobilisation;
democratic organising; gathering information; carrying out feasibility studies; preparing
business plans; building networks; accessing funding; obtaining professional advice on
legal and technical matters; accessing specialist expertise; developing or acquiring
skills in such areas as financial planning, project development and management, financial
management; and developing organisational or community capacity.
Finding the Resources
Only rarely can a group or organisation fund such activities from its own resources, as
the case studies confirm. One initiative, Loft and Hill of White Hamars, has relied almost
entirely on private resources, with some assistance from a conservation organisation, the
Scottish Wildlife Trust (SWT). Two more groups, one private group (Corrary) and one
community group (Birse) have used their own resources in the early stages, applying for
assistance on a step-by step basis as their projects have developed. Eigg represents a
variation on this model in which the community group has formed a consortium with SWT and
The Highland Council, largely because of those organisations’ involvement and support
during the difficult years of transition from private to community owenership. Without
assets other than the island itself, which it does not wish to use as collateral, the
consortium too has had to raise separate funding for each of its planned projects over the
last two years.
Three other very different social landowners - a community group, a public sector
consortium and a voluntary conservation organisation - have built funding partnerships to
access the capital required to achieve major goals. In this way the Abriachan Forest Trust
was able to secure title, and so access, to the forest. Similarly the consortium of public
sector agencies that comprised the Kinlochleven Steering Group and the NTS at Balmacara
each used this means to secure the capital required to carry through an enabling project
with a specific outcome - the creation of new accommodation and changes in land use to
provide new economic opportunities.
In the eighth case another community group - Laggan - has accepted a form of
partnership with a public agency in order to be able to access the resources on which its
plans for economic and social revival depend. It too is faced with the need to find
step-by-step funding although it has been assisted in preparing applications by its much
larger partner.
Accessing Funding
Few social landowners have assets which they can use as collateral for loans. Therefore
accessing grant aid assumes enormous importance, even for large social landowners. Making
funding applications is rarely a straightforward matter, often fraught with delays and
uncertainties. It requires knowledge of potential funders and their individual
requirements and also the know-how and contacts to build a partnership or find matching
funding. Building a funding partnership can be costly and time-consuming process, even for
a large organisation, as the NTS found at Balmacara. For smaller social landowners,
already heavily committed and possibly dependent on voluntary help, assembling a funding
package or making a case for a project which may have novel or unfamiliar elements may be
particularly burdensome, taxing reserves of perseverance and ingenuity.
Ownership and Access
Equally important is ownership of land or some other legal agreement which confers
long-term rights of access and management, as at Birse and Laggan. It is perhaps
significant that six of the eight projects described in this volume were initiated by
groups and organisations which have clear title to land, and that the remaining two have
been built on clear agreements about land use and management and access to ancient shared
land use rights. For many aspiring social landowners ensuring access to land and other
resources is no easy matter, as the experience of Abriachan, Birse, Laggan and Eigg
illustrates. Of key importance in the first three of these cases was the good will of the
existing landowner; in all four a wide range of support from both within and outwith the
community was a significant factor in success. It is important that legislation on land
reform should acknowledge the importance of access to land for the furtherance of social
objectives and should facilitate negotiation of the purchase, or lease, of parcels of land
by aspiring social landowners.
Commitment, Cohesion and Capacity
Accessing funding, acquiring land, and delivering benefits may well depend on
group, organisational or community cohesion and capacity. Several of the case studies
provide evidence of the importance of these factors, and of the difficulty of
strengthening them to match new challenges. On Eigg, for example, the new trust’s
early progress was impeded for a while by uncertainties over community involvement and
participation. The difficulty of getting these matters right is highlighted by the fact
that the islanders perceived as unsatisfactory the arrangements which had ensured that
they had opportunities to participate in discussions and decisions about the way forward
during the campaign to buy the island. The resulting lack of trust threatened to create
tensions in the fledgling relationship between the trust’s directors and the rest of
the islanders, and time had to be spent seeking agreement on more satisfactory procedures.
The importance of getting things right is widely acknowledged. Long-term success at
Balmacara is seen as dependent on the continuing capacity of local representatives to meet
fresh challenges. Laggan, which was also set back in the early stages is well aware of the
need to strengthen community commitment even after its history of over 20 years of
community-led development. Abriachan is taking active steps to develop capacity, but the
success of basic work - on building confidence on Eigg and on participation in taking new
ideas forward at Laggan - is seen as dependent on external funding. A modest amount of
external assistance, made available promptly, can make a substantial difference as Maggie
Fyffe points out, but was secured only with difficulty on Eigg.
Successful social landowning groups and organisations which depend on volunteer effort
or part-time development workers have a particular need to enlarge their capacity if they
are to maintain momentum. Laggan’s difficulty in adopting at short notice the outlook
and practices appropriate to a commercial operation highlights the problem. Social
landowners which (like Birse, Eigg, Laggan and Abriachan) are developing community
enterprises may receive substantial funding and will, if they thrive, have annual
turnovers running into not just tens but possibly hundreds of thousands of pounds. For
each the challenge is to develop the capacity to match funders’ expectations about
its ability to operate as an efficient business and comply with legal requirements for
full financial control over the venture.
The Need
to Rethink How Support and Assistance is Provided
Such considerations help to clarify the significance of the success social
landowners have had in social and economic regeneration. The importance of the social and
economic gains social landowners have achieved and the growth of community enterprises
within the social landowning sector suggest the need for a comprehensive review of the
support and assistance available from public sector agencies. The increased support for
social landowners referred to in the overview in Volume One - from such organisations as
the Crofting Trusts Advisory Service (CTAS) and Highlands and Islands Enterprise’s
Community Land Unit - is welcome, but does not extend to the whole sector.
The current system of provision of assistance can operate fairly well when a social
landowner or aspiring landowner has a fairly specific objective, e.g. to acquire and
manage a community woodland, or to build a skills training workshop or a new sports or
community hall or to acquire ground for, say, a football pitch or organic horticulture.
However it is not particularly well suited to the support of long-term social and economic
development which social landowners are now attempting to facilitate - at Birse, Laggan,
Eigg and Abriachan. It has difficulty assisting multi-objective projects as NTS’s
experience illustrates. Favouring short or limited-term, one-off projects, the existing
system of provision tends to encourage stop-go development rather than long-term planning
implemented through a cyclical process of assistance, monitoring, auditing and review
followed by further assistance. Severe constraints on funds mean that agencies are seen to
hold the whiphand and bidding takes on a competitive aspect, which encourages the talking
up of proposals and accompanying business plans.
Existing arrangements may be the legacy of now outdated attitudes towards conservation
and environmental projects. Until relatively recently, community woodland, ecological
restoration projects, organic horticulture, conservation-based farming, or improved social
amenities were seen by many to have marginal impact or to be too expensive to be adopted
on a large scale, and therefore not to be regarded as part of mainstream community and
economic development. In such a context, funding assistance could seem not unlike a rather
token acknowledgement of group or community effort or aspiration, an impression
strengthened by the difficulty several social landowners have found in securing funding
for project development workers, and the frequency with which “empowerment” -
used rather misleadingly in the sense of an increase in group or community confidence - is
identified as an outcome in community development projects, sometimes in the absence of
any very tangible outcomes. Laggan’s experience suggests that a good application may
be as important in accessing financial assistance as the capacity to deliver proposed
benefits if awarded grant aid, or the urgency of the needs the project is designed to
address.
New
Provision: Investing in the Social Landowning Sector
Growth Points
Social landowners delivering the kind of benefits identified in the case studies make a
valuable contribution to society on two counts: conducting practical experiments on the
feasibility of new initiatives as well as delivering benefits. Therefore any new system of
provision needs to be based on a clear recognition that social landowning initiatives of
the kind described in the case studies are growth-points for democratic, social and
economic development and are capable of making significant sustainable contributions to
the common good. Moreover, the actual provision of assistance needs to be guided by an
informed awareness of the development challenges social landowners face.
Partners in Investment in
Welfare
There is a need for public funding agencies to welcome social landowners as
contributors, or potential contributors, to the mainstream national development effort.
Their project proposals should be assessed as potential opportunities for sustained and
sustainable investment in social and economic welfare. In responding, public funding
agencies need to see social landowners and aspiring social landowners as equal partners in
an important collaboration, in which they share control and ultimate responsibility for
beneficial outcomes. To such a partnership social landowners can bring social and/or
environmental concern, awareness of need, vision, long-term commitment, local or
specialist knowledge (including knowledge of both associational life and power
relationships, and of development options, opportunities and obstacles), and proposals for
programmes and projects. In addition, social landowners are able to create and sustain the
necessary stock of social capital - trust, co-operation, unity, solidarity, and the spirit
of participation that all communities require to survive and prosper, important factors in
the strengthening and promotion of local associational life and relationships. (The
enhancement of social capital is now widely recognised as being an important contributory
factor to local economic and social well-being.) To match these contributions public
sector agencies can supply assistance in the form of easily accessible information,
specialist help, capital funding, and revenue funding to ensure access to expertise,
training, monitoring and other support.
Policy Presumptions
Proposed projects may seem ambitious, indeed aspirational, but should be entitled to
a feasibility study which applies social and environmental as well as purely financial
criteria. There is a need for a presumption that initiatives will be funded if feasibility
studies and business plans identify sufficient social, economic and environmental
benefits, and that priority will be given to social landowners which plan, like Laggan and
Corrary, to develop local businesses which add value to local resources. There should also
be a third presumption: that the practical provision of that social landowners should have
access to the full range of support available to businesses in the private sector.
Removing Obstacles
There is a need for one further presumption: that practical procedures for applying
for, making use of, and accounting for grant assistance will be made as user-friendly as
possible. Improved arrangements will bring to an end a range of commonly experienced
problems: for example, problems such as NTS experienced with its integrated project; the
problems Abriachan had in meeting the varying requirements of different funders and
bearing the burden of ‘deficit’ funding; and the problems Eigg encountered in
trying to secure the revenue funding required to maintain the momentum of their
development planning. There is also a need for the ready provision of funding for other
purposes: for example, to provide arrangements for bridging finance as effective as those
FE put in place on Laggan Forest Trust’s behalf; or to allow the full economic
assessment that the work of Roy Harris and Mary Jones at Loft and the Hill of White Hamars
deserves.
Negotiated Outcomes
To avoid any suggestion of tokenism there needs to be a clear expectation on both
parties that social landowners and agencies will jointly negotiate
Capacity
To ensure that social landowners are enabled to meet agreed targets, there is a need to
for public funding agencies to address up-front the issue of capacity. Agencies need to be
enabled to ensure that social landowners who receive financial assistance have the
capacity to allow them to assume proper financial and legal responsibility and so
safeguard the delivery of agreed benefits. The experience of Eigg and Laggan demonstrates
that there is a need for agencies to invest in capacity building and organisational
development by funding posts and training which will allow individuals within groups and
organisations to assume key administrative and managerial roles.
For community initiatives of the kind Birse, Eigg and Laggan are developing there needs
to be a joint agreement that a range of jobs will be created - not just the jobs which may
be regarded as part of the benefits of a project (for example, jobs as cutters, fencers or
footpath constructors), but also the jobs which represent the required capacity (for
example, forest planners, project development officers, administrators, accountants,
financial controllers, social auditors). One full-time post might allow several social
landowners’ needs to be met: for instance, a social auditor or financial monitor
could work with several different land-owners to make up a full work-load. By building
such capacity two problems will be solved: monitoring ‘rate of return’, and
building social landowners’ capacity to deliver specified outcomes in accordance with
funders’ expectation of competence, probity and responsibility.
Ensuring Succession
There is also a need for agencies to make assistance available to social landowners to
allow them to address the issue of ensuring organisational succession - of encouraging and
training new leaders, by for example attracting and involving young people, as Abriachan
has successfully managed to do.
Developing Institutional
Capacity
The experience of the Laggan Forest Trust highlights an issue which affect many social
landowners - the need for agencies not just to enable the development of community
capacity, but also to develop their own institutional capacity in appropriate ways, for
example by developing clear policies and institutional guidelines for supporting community
and local economic development and methods for implementing these effectively. Building
institutional capacity would involve becoming fully ‘literate’ in the sector, so
that, for example, public agencies would feel comfortable assessing the needs of
co-ordinated, multi-objective projects which integrate governance targets and social,
environmental, economic objectives; would be able to provide tailored, integrated
assistance; and would be familiar with appropriate tools and techniques such as forms of
social accounting, community indicators and participative methodologies. There is also a
need for public agencies to promote understanding of the social landowning sector in other
organisations such as quangos so that conflicts of interest of the kind that Corrary
experienced are handled more positively.
Facilitating Innovation
There is also a need for public agencies to provide encouragement and effective
practical support for innovative work, such as the Loft and the Hill of White Hamars
Grazing Project. It would also mean that public agencies would be alert to the
significance of such projects which may operate on a relatively small scale, but which
have very important implications for the agriculture sector as a whole, and would
facilitate public debate by promoting them and making information widely available.
Discussion
The removal of funding constraints is critical. If this is felt to be too costly a
drain on the public purse, it should be remembered that only fully vetted proposals would
go forward; that projects would be monitored; that both project partners would be publicly
accountable as a result of the social auditing process; and that projects would be
supported, possibly by seconded officials as Roy Tylden-Wright suggests.
It may be thought that the provision of such a level of assistance and support will
destroy the commitment and drive of social landowners, either by making life too
comfortable for them, or conversely by making it even more onerous with the addition of
comprehensive monitoring and review commitments and the obligation to meet agreed targets.
But the increased provision will only be adequate if it includes an element to provide the
capacity to cope with extra workloads. Moreover, far from sapping the will of the social
landowning sector, such provision is necessary to enable and empower it. Without it, there
must be some doubt whether social landowners can succeed in developing the co-operative
mentality to which Roy Tylden-Wright refers and without which some social landowners may
not be able to develop sustainable self-reliance. As Roy Tylden-Wright also suggests,
social landowners who take the route chosen by the Laggan Forest Trust but who are unable
to develop new capacity may find that the kind of opportunity joint management represents
will be denied them, and they will have no option but to depend on a larger partner and be
content with a consultative role.
The system of enlarged provision suggested above would benefit smaller social
landowners as well as the larger ones which are already running what are in effect
commercial enterprises. It would ease much of the problem of isolation, which compounds
the burden of finding capital and revenue funding and accessing other forms of assistance.
It would also encourage them to move on to bigger projects, perhaps forming partnerships
to do so, which are more able to address the really thorny issues of self-reliance that
lie at the heart of progress towards sustainable development.
Any such enlarged provision would be a very effective form of public subsidy, for it
would have the merit of progressing two goals at once: not only doing much to develop the
capacities of existing social landowners (and so facilitating the delivery of benefits)
but also benefiting the sector as a whole. It seems consistent with many of these
suggestions for enlarged provision to be co-ordinated and/or channelled through a
decentralised Social Land Development Bank with a ‘sustainability’ ethos and
institutional culture, a broad trans-sectoral outlook, self-up-dating institutional
capacity, and expertise in such areas as social accounting. The establishment of such an
institution would provide welcome evidence of the serious commitment to long-term funding
which Camille Dressler suggests is necessary.
In short, there is a need to regard social landowners as important agents for very
focused and cost-effective social and economic development who operate community
enterprises that are expected to manage local assets in a sustainable way in return for
assistance with project development, capacity building and monitoring. There should be a
clear expectation that with the help of user-friendly assistance they will grow their
assets or grow a sustainable yield so that they can show an agreed rate of return.
Arrangements may include the option of an element of loan funding (as opposed to grant
aid) as a means of balancing the equation of assistance and public benefit.
Conclusion
The case studies show that social landownership can work on a variety of scales to
deliver benefits with an efficiency not always achieved by large-scale public investment
and without some of the costs of purely profit-driven enterprise in the private sector.
The great majority of the sixteen initiatives described here and in Volume 1 represent
the cutting edge in land use and management within the social landownership sector. They
include, in this volume, an unparalleled community effort to reach legal agreement on
ancient shared land use rights and access to important economic resources, at Birse; the
United Kingdom’s first joint forest management partnership with FE, at Laggan; the
first community purchase of FE plantations, at Abriachan; the first instance, on Eigg, of
community and economic development within a sustainability framework by a consortium
comprising local people, the local authority and a voluntary conservation organisation;
the first large-scale investment in social and economic infrastructure by a large
voluntary conservation organisation on behalf of a local community, at Balmacara; a
pioneering practical exploration at Corrary of how ecological restoration and new
enterprise can be integrated; as well as the exceptional achievements in
conservation-based farming at Loft and the Hill of White Hamars; and the stakeholder
partnership to save the village of Kinlochleven from terminal decline.
These initiatives have shown us the future - and offered much convincing evidence that
it will work, given a chance. There lies the rub, for the case studies also demonstrate
that such initiatives - and potentially many more like them - could deliver greater
benefits given a more supportive policy framework which effectively acknowledges the full
value of social landowners’ commitment to the common good. It would be a pity - and
an important missed opportunity - if society and the new parliament does not acknowledge
the innovative contributions of social landowners by providing them with the precision
tools they need and instead continues to expect them to make do with a limited set of
rather blunt instruments designed for the last century.
By demonstrating the need for a new strategic provision based on the principles of
sustainability - taking responsibility for others, respecting nature, providing for the
future, making wise use of local assets, and practising self-reliance, the projects
described in this volume represent in their diversity a case which is more than just the
sum of the individual initiatives, impressive though each may be. It is to be hoped that
by documenting the way forward these case studies will help to bring about the more
generous provision of public support and assistance the social landowning sector deserves.
