Many of residents in ColGlen will have received a paper version of this survey in the Spring 2020 newsletter. For those who need more copies or who haven’t received the survey, please find the downloadable and printable PDF below:
Category: Resilience
The following message is from our Resilience Committee / Community Council Chair. CGDT has announced the cancellation of all open and closed meetings until further notice, see here.
Dear Community Member,
The next few weeks/months will be difficult for the country as Covid-19 spreads. Both the UK and Scottish Governments are putting things in place to try and slow down the spread but we as a community can also help to slow the spread down by helping those who fall ill, have to self-isolate or are vulnerable.
If you or a family member show symptoms and have to self isolate or if you are vulnerable we can help. Contact one of the numbers below and one of our volunteers will help you by:
• Collecting and delivering your shopping to your door
• Collecting and delivering medicines
• Chatting to you on the phone
• Urgent supplies
Something everyone can do:
• Phone your immediate neighbours every couple of days to check they are okay.
As the virus spreads people will become more isolated and it is important that we keep in contact and look after each other.
To get a volunteer to contact you phone our volunteers as per the attached PDF below:
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
The AGM minutes has been approved by the board for publication as draft on the website here. and below is the transcript from the minute of the Chair’s report for the year ending 2018.
CHAIR’S REPORT FOR 2017-18
If I were to characterise this year for the trust I would say we have undergone a massive change, albeit one which has snuck under the radar somewhat.
In 2010 we conceived a plan to create a sustainable income for the trust and the community through the generation of renewable energy in the glen. At every turn this ambition has been thwarted – either by existing installations in the case of microhydro generation, or by the refusal of planning applications, in the case of wind.
Now, while I think we have a moral and ethical duty to do everything we can to mitigate climate change, we understand as the board we are an organisation which has been set a specific community-oriented task – to improve the lot of as many people as we can in the community through the projects we run.
We have had sterling success in this. The Warmer and Greener ColGlen projects are still, if you will pardon the pun, bearing fruit. This year we will run our third Peoples and Communities Fund Training programme in the forest, training young and unemployed folks and making them ready for work.
However, the projects we have struggle to earn income, and therefore do not contribute to our core requirement as an organisation, which is to be sustainable. With the failure of our renewables business plan, we have been working to reconfigure our approach so that we can continue to develop projects.
That’s the local context. Nationally, Brexit and the UK’s departure from the EU has made the funding landscape very difficult, and means that over the next two years we will find it very difficult to access substantial funds.
The question we have been asking is What can the trust do? And in that context What Next for the community.
Cathleen through her role as chair of the Community Council and with the support of her fellow community councillors has been pushing for a reconfigured agenda for the whole of the community, and the board of the trust completely buys into this initiative and wants to help deliver the outcomes the What Next? session identified.
Our role is to enable this. At present we employ a freelance General Manager, Amber, and we have now taken on two further freelance development officers, Sara MacLean and Nikki Brown. Amber will continue with the day-to-day, week-to-week admin, and Sara and Nikki will be tasked with bringing forward projects.
Shortly after Christmas through our development officers we will help a steering group move forward with a community newsletter, we will develop some work around the idea of trails within ColGlen and move forward with the clachan hub.
Which brings me to report on existing projects. The hub has stalled. Capacity and the reconfigurations that are going on at the moment around grant-funding have meant we need to re-examine this project and work out how to move forward. I have asked Sara to investigate how we might best spend the remaining development money to move forward.
The forest will need to be brought back into activity, both in terms of ensuring the path network is functional, but also how we are to use the asset now that we have wrapped up the CARES loan and issues around renewables. Nikki will be looking at this.
The Loch Lomond & Cowal Way, as I am sure Jim will report, has been building on the success of previous years and as we come to the end of the coastal community funding, is continuing to work towards the goal of sustainability. There is an ongoing crowdfunding campaign which will help with this. I urge you to contribute if you haven’t. Why? Well, as an example I will quote one of the outcomes of What Next? That we should market ColGlen more. The Cowal Way does this, was always designed to do this. It raises the profile of our area, but more importantly brings in customers for our accommodation providers and our visitor attractions – it is increasingly supporting our local economy. Numbers are up and that will only continue if we can continue to manage the Way proactively.
As I am sure you are aware Kyles Community Broadband closed the procurement for a community-owned network for this area without awarding a contract. This decision was the culmination of negotiations between KCB, HIE and the government and will result in our community receiving a higher priority part of the new R100 project. But more of that later.
I shall close this report with thanks to our hard-working members of staff, Stewart, Charlie and Amber, who put heart and soul into their roles. we are most thankful for their efforts. As for the board: Jm your continued energy with the Way is extraordinary and we are very grateful for it. Cathleen, many thanks for your input this year – its been invigorating for the board and has led to some really good stuff. Colin, many thanks for your input as treasurer – its been much appreciated. John, without you and Graham Curran, the community would not have the prospect of R100 so many thanks for your dogged determination. Alex your sage advice has as always been very much appreciated.
2019 looks like being a very interesting year – I just hope, for the community, it is one of successes and progress, not confusion and division as it has been south of the border these last months, thank you.
Charles Dixon-Spain, Chair
For more information on this exciting post please visit KCB’s website, here.
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.
We are presently awaiting determination over our planning application for the siting to two community wind turbines on Stronafian Forest. The decision should be imminent, but in the meantime we have recently been asked about the financial forecasts that we are working with.
Firstly we should say that we are legally bound by confidentiality agreements which protect the intellectual property rights of our wind turbine developer.
The legal conditions on our working financial forecasts begin with this statement:
By receiving this document, CGDT (“the recipient”) agrees to keep permanently confidential the information contained herein or made available in connection with any further enquiries (the “Information Provided”). The Information Provided may be made available only to a the recipient’s employees and professional advisors directly involved in the appraisal of such information. The Information Provided shall not, either in whole or in part, be copied, reproduced, distributed or otherwise made available to any other party in any circumstances … nor may it be used for any other purpose than that for which it is intended.
Unfortunately, this is not ideal, and it means we can only talk in very general terms about the figures we have been given. Firstly, there are two forms of income which will accrue to the community. There will be community benefit payments (which all windfarm developers pay) which will be at a rate of over £5000 per MW/h. This will be set aside in a trust for the community to use, rather as it has been for the Cruach Mhor Windfarm Trust. There will also be profits earned by the installation as profit by an armslength subsidiary of CGDT’s. These profits will be paid to the Development Trust tax free, given its charitable status, and will amount to at least £50,000 per annum on average over the lifetime of the installation, and probably much more. Of course our forecasts also include variables such as interest rates and the types of loans we will be able to obtain, but by using the arms’length company we limit the liability to CGDT and therefore the community as well. Indeed, the profits I mention take into account all the costs incurred in installation, operation and dismantlement.
Once we have returned the forest to its pristine prewind turbine state we anticipate the community will have had the opportunity to benefit from well over £2M. CGDT has obtained over £2.5M funding for projects thus far from an initial seed investment of c. £50K by the Cruach Mhor Windfarm Trust, the potential therefore for Colintraive and Glendaruel to draw down much greater funding becomes possible with the advent of these turbines and the income they will provide.
When and if we receive consent, we will then be in a position to finalise the figures further, and we hope to give a more detailed answer to everyone. Of course, the delays on the planning decision erode this, particularly after the recent changes made by the Westminster Government on renewables.
Indeed, it is the view of the Wind Turbine working group, that if the project wasn’t able to return an income of £50,000 per annum on average, then it would recommend to the board of the trust that the project shouldn’t go forward, even with consent given.
We thoroughly understand that some members of the community have objections to the appearance of the turbines themselves. However, we would argue, that (a) the benefit accruing to the community is worth it (b) the turbines will be there only for the lifetime of the project, and then taken down. The success on Gigha shows that turbines can work well for a community, providing a basis for real and lasting change.
To show the impact, from perhaps the most critical view, we have taken a screengrab of the wireframe and photomontage showing the visual impact of the turbines. The first image is a closeup, and the second gives the full panorama.
Please note the wireframes do not show the masking effect of vegetation, including the commercial forestry plantation, however the photomontage does. In this case, for this view, only the closest of the turbines is visible over the tops of the trees:
The full panorama is below:
The full set of montages are available at the Development Trust office.
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.