A much-loved Stirling animal charity has launched a desperate appeal to find new premises before time runs out on their current site.
Reanimate, which helps young people with additional support needs and those recovering from trauma work with animals, has been based at its current site at Parkhead Farm in Bridge of Allan since the charity’s inception back in 2012.
However, with the growing number of animals and users on the site, they have been looking for alternative land to pop up for several years.
But that search has now been kicked into a high gear after a planned move to a new site in Dollar – deemed to be perfect for their needs – fell through at the eleventh hour in early December and the lease set to run out at their Bridge of Allan base in March.
John McErlane is a trustee of the charity and came on board after it helped his daughter, who has autism.
He said: “We’re trying to find a place to help the charity grow – for example we’ve wanted to run open days for a while, but we have to abide with the wishes of landlords and neighbours so that can sometimes limit things.
“We were offered a place out in Dollar which was ideal for us, it had a massive barn where we could stable all of the animals and space where we could apply for planning permission for a house for the workers.
“It was also a flatter piece of land so it was more manageable. The plans were underway and we had set up a JustGiving to fund the move. We had got to the stage of beginning to dismantle our operations here when we got the unfortunate news that the move was off as Clackmannanshire Council had condemned the barn and horse arena on the site.
“The land has since been sold which is understandable, so we are reaching out to anyone we know – landowners, entrepreneurs and so on – because while there are a lot of places for sale, we don’t have the funds available that we would need for a sale like that, probably around £120,000.”
The charity currently houses 15 horses, as well as chickens, sheep, dogs, cats and two staff members on site.
And John is hopeful in securing a last-gasp deal to find the charity its “forever home”.
He added: “It’s difficult because landowners and farmers are reluctant to give up their land and we know housing developers can offer more than we can but we’re trying to find a place that can be the forever home for our charity which we would eventually be in a position to buy.
“Any funding we get currently is restricted to the projects that we run and getting unrestricted funding for something like this is difficult and with the economic situation currently, that is even more difficult. We can’t buy the land we’re on at the moment and with the lease up in March it’s all hands to the pump currently.”
