Includes:
- Broadband Self-help – please email broadband@cgdt.org for more info
- Board News – newly elected directors & co-opted directors
- A Governance Update
- Modan’s Well
- Project Report
- Resilience News
- What3Words
Includes:
Here’s our latest issue – all about Shortening the Winter for residents in Colintraive and Glendaruel. We hope to see lots of entries for the various competitions!
Community Council Chair, Cathleen Russell reflects on the community response to COVID-19, how we have been helped by businesses and individuals alike, and what the next months hold for our community as we move into the colder months.
In this Issue:
Update from the Resilience Group Contact list • Prescription Deliveries Food Deliveries • Other help on offer
Issued before Christmas, the newsletter has all the essentials for the communities of Colintraive and Glendaruel. This time the focus was on resilience.
With 500 copies distributed to the community and local businesses, we’ve now generated a downloadable version.
Included in this issue is news from the community council, the development trust, the church, our wildswimmers and the ColGlen chorus, to name but a few.
We are looking to update the map for the Summer issue, including more businesses and useful information, as well as adverts. We have 5 takers for the ad spaces so far and only another 4 are available – get yours by contacting the newsletter group through cgdt@cgdt.org
News, Information, Map and Walks for community and visitors has been published this week. Designed to inform locals, market the community and provide essential information this quarterly publication is already looking for ideas for articles for the next (Summer) issue.
This quarter’s issue includes news from the community council, development trust, ColGlen growers, the Heritage Centre, ColGlen Chorus and much more!
If you haven’t received a copy, or have an idea for an article, please let us know!
With regard to the offer made to the community council by the CGDT chair to hold a public meeting to discuss the community project to build two wind turbines in Stronafian Forest, the determination of the Development Trust board on the matter is as follows.
After much discussion the board have decided not to go ahead with a public meeting. There are several reasons for this:
1. The planning application is being processed and further discussion will not add materially to the outcome of the council’s deliberations.
2. We have invested over £120,000 in this project as part of a CARES loan. We have match-funded this investment at a rate of 5% of Forest Development Funds. This is a significant commitment for the trust, with these funds being applied for and granted in the full light of community scrutiny through AGMs, published minutes and community plans. We are bound by that commitment to follow the process through and we believe that while it is everyone’s right to have a view on a planning application, we are disappointed that the community members who are now so strenuously objecting didn’t make their views known at an earlier juncture and in a spirit of consensual community planning.
3. We are further disappointed that these concerns were not raised when the initial planning decision to allow a met mast to be constructed was made.
4. Furthermore, and in the light of 2 & 3 above we are more than content that there were sufficient public consultation meetings over the last 2 years for the community to be fully appraised of the project. The Community Council is well aware that owning and running our own renewables project has been a primary objective for the Trust since 2009.
5. We are not convinced that a further meeting will provide any level of resolution for either those who support the trust’s application or those who do not. We are concerned that if we provided a community forum in this format there is likely to be a deepening of the adversarial climate which has emerged over the issue.
6. The Development Trust has maintained a transparent stance with regard to the project, and have always encouraged members of the community to come to the board, individual directors or our staff to express concerns.
7. As we have said repeatedly at AGMs and other meetings, the Development Trust would rather those whose are dissatisfied with our progress, step up, become directors or members of working groups and help direct the trust’s agenda.
8. We stand by our assertions of the benefit of this development to the whole community: in its ability to offset many of the cuts the council is having to apply; and in its support of the development plan (redrafted in 2013) which the Development Trust is following (and which is published through the CGDT website).
9. Lastly, planning consent if we receive it, is only one step along a much longer road which involves subsidy levels, funding rounds, finance and business planning – all of which will dictate whether or not this is a viable project. To go forward this project must earn the community at least £57,500 per annum on average in combined profit and community benefit.
All the documents pertaining to our recent application to Argyll and Bute Council for permission to erect two wind turbines in Stronafian Forest are available here.
This application represents one facet of CGDT’s integrated plan to ensure that our community is sustainable and successful in the long term.
More information will be available at our AGM on the 13th September at 2pm in Glendaruel Village Hall.
We’re looking for two dynamic people to help us implement our latest project, Greener Colglen (more details here).
If you are interested please contact us through the contact form on this website, cgdt@cgdt.org or at the DT office 01700 842 358.
Closing date for applications 18th October 2013