A COMMUNITY group says two “game-changing” deals finalised last week will finally let it help local people, almost 20 years after its ground-breaking purchase of a vast Highland estate.
The Assynt Foundation, which bought the 44,000-acre Glencanisp and Drumrunie estates, north of Ullapool, from the Vestey meat barons for £3 million using lottery and Government grants, has faced criticism for failing to bring benefits to the community since the 2005 buyout.
There is currently just one person working on the estate – far fewer than in the days of the Vesteys.
But the foundation on Thursday signed off on a deal with conservation charity the Woodland Trust for the organisation to create forests on the estate, and money from selling carbon credits from the trees will be split between the two organisations.
At the same time, it has finalised details of an agreement with hotelier Nick Dent to lease Glencanisp Lodge, the estate’s main house. He will spend £1.5m refurbishing the building as a boutique hotel, and create 20 full-time jobs, as well as paying rent to the foundation.
Foundation chair Lewis MacAskill said the forestry scheme is expected to provide a seven-figure sum over the next 10 to 15 years. Cash from the scheme will allow the foundation to start new projects such as employing outdoor rangers, creating housing for people in the remote area around the village of Lochinver and peatland restoration.
MacAskill said the deals were a game changer, and had been needed because volunteers from the community around Lochinver of just 600 or so people just did not have the capacity to make the best of all its assets.
“This is a win-win for us,” he said. “It’s what we have needed for almost 20 years. It allows us to start making a meaningful contribution and put something back into the community.”
The foundation bought the estate using £1.6m from the Scottish Land Fund – at the time National Lottery cash – £600,000 from Highlands and Island Enterprise (HIE) and £100,000 from government agency Scottish Natural Heritage (now NatureScot), plus charitable donations. It was the first major buyout using the provisions of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 to force a landowner to sell to the local community.
It later spent a further £250,000 of HIE cash and £700,000 Big Lottery money on a £1.5m restoration of the lodge, and ran it as a B&B and guesthouse. It was unable to make money from the operation, and it closed in 2019.
The foundation has carried out other work to benefit the community and environment, but nothing like as much as it wanted to, and it tried but failed to develop a wind turbine and a hydroelectricity plant on the estate to get an income for its work.
The Woodland Trust will take over management of about a sixth of the estate, establishing more than 7000 acres of forest.
Investors buy carbon credits from such new woodland because it soaks up carbon from the atmosphere, offsetting carbon emissions from their other activities.
Glencanisp Lodge will cater for well-heeled travellers on the popular North Coast 500 route, which passes close by.
Dent, an economist by trade, and his PR guru wife Charlotte went into the hotel business 10 years ago and have built up a stable of 10 boutique hotels, including two others in the Highlands.
The lodge was largely redesigned in the 1920s and contains a wealth of Art Deco features. No date has been set yet for its reopening.
MacAskill said the decision to seek the two deals had been driven by the problem of finding suitable volunteers to do all the things the foundation wants to do.
He said: “It’s been the number one challenge from inception [of the foundation] to get the capacity but also the right mix of people on the board.
“Recognising all those issues, it just came to us that there was another way around this by partnering with other people that can help the foundation to realise our ambitions.”
He said while the income has to be shared, there would be more income because professionals had stepped in.
“Our problem will be how do we spend this money – instead of where the hell are we going to get the money from for the next month – which is a lovely problem to have.”
