A ROW has erupted between tenants and management over living conditions on the island of Ulva following the biggest community land buyout of recent years.
Some residents of the island, off the west coast of the island of Mull, have been left with filthy brown water.
They also claim island assets such as a Thomas Telford-designed church have been neglected and communications with the ownership company have broken down. The 5000-acre island, which has 16 residents, was bought from its private landlord in 2018, with a grant of £4.4 million from the Scottish Government’s Land Fund. At that time, rented houses were rotting and the population had almost disappeared.
The island is now run by North West Mull Community Woodland Company (CWC) but a new report by the Development Trusts Association Scotland (DTAS) said relationships between the CWC’s board and some community members had “soured” to the point of “low morale”.
Resident Rebecca Munro, who was an enthusiastic campaigner for the deal, still believes in the buyout but has become disillusioned with the CWC. She told The Ferret: “At times, it feels a little bit like we still are just tenants of another landowner.”
Board member John Addy defended the CWC’s record, however, but agreed change was needed. He suggested the company could hand over the island to a new group.
The buyout happened after years of complaints by tenants on the island over management by the former owner. The population then was Munro, her husband Rhuri and their two children, and bus driver, Barry George.
The deal needed an organisation to take on the ownership, and the CWC, set up in 2006 to take over former state forestry land for community benefit, shouldered the task.
Uniquely, the Scottish Government allowed the Scottish Land Fund to carry over a £3m underspend from the year before to make the huge grant for the buyout, breaking its normal limit of £1m for individual grants.
Since the buyout, the island’s homes have been renovated and the population has grown. The island is being farmed once again, and there have been improvements to piers.
Soon after the buyout, however, Munro began to feel there were problems ahead. “Once the dust settles and all the cameras have left, it’s very hard work in reality,” she said. She believes the organisation, with a volunteer board, two part-time staff, and no office simply does not have the capacity to handle the development of an entire community.
“I think especially with the position we started from with a very tiny population … there were issues around capacity.
“Being that island apart from the rest of Mull has presented some challenges … it’s not that kind of community-ownership utopia that you maybe think it will be.”
George had doubts about the organisation from the start and now claims it has been a “disaster”.
The current water problem is seen by both George and Munro as an example of alleged mismanagement. They explained that with a growing population, thanks to housing renovations, the spring-water supply was inadequate. An old reservoir was brought back into action, but the water comes out of the taps a deep peaty brown.
Residents began boiling their water to prevent upset stomachs in May 2022, and an expert report commissioned by the CWC previously, said both the spring and reservoir sources posed a “high risk to human health”.
Some residents now fetch their water from the mainland. Munro said fixing it has taken far too long: “It doesn’t look great if you try and have a bath. You get an instant tan,” she added.
“If you were a tenant elsewhere, you would report it, you would hope it would be rectified. By the nature of where we live on the islands, things take longer to fix. But I think here they’re taking longer than they need to.”
She feels that because residents are part of the community that owns the island, the company fails to treat them as tenants who are paying for services – including a £35-a-month water levy.
She added: “It adds unnecessary pressure to the relationship between residents and the board. Clean water doesn’t seem like that much of a deal when it’s something you’re paying for.”
GEORGE and Munro say there are concerns over the state of the island museum building, Sheila’s Cottage; the 200-year-old church designed by Thomas Telford, and Ulva House, the former landlord’s mansion.
George said: “[Ulva House] has been brought to absolute ruin. It’s rotten, it’s stood empty for six years, and anybody who lives on the west coast knows you can’t leave a property empty, you’ve got to get it heated. It’s now got to be completely gutted, which is going to be a huge expense.”
DTAS – the independent umbrella group for organisations such as the CWC – organised a meeting between the board and residents last month to find a new way forward.
It reported after the meeting: “There is recognition that relationships have soured to the point of personal damage to ongoing wellbeing and low morale in the CWC board and in the community. For the trust to continue to be meaningful as a community anchor organisation being led fully by the members, a reset is needed.”
Munro and George say members of the old board, which they blamed for many of the problems, promised to stand down at the CWC AGM on September 9. New island resident Nicholas Waller, a language teacher and former lawyer, was one of six new candidates who stood for election as directors.
But his directorship was rejected. The other five candidates were elected. Four of the five former directors were also re-elected, and the fifth stayed on the board as his term of office was not over.
Munro said: “If they had a legitimate reason for blocking Nicholas from joining the board, I think it would have been better to be open and transparent about it ahead of the vote.”
Waller himself said: “I was disappointed by the vote to exclude me, but not surprised. The water quality issue is one of a number of betrayals of the company’s tenants.”
Director John Addy, who has been involved with the group since it was set up, said the water problem had been intermittent since 2022, and that a new treatment system – being installed “any day now” with an £80,000 grant from Argyll and Bute Council – would ensure a proper supply.
The island church was already in serious disrepair when CWC took over, and repair has not been a priority due to limited funds, Addy said. He also explained that Sheila’s Cottage was re-thatched after the buyout but the thatch failed and a new contractor was lined up to fix the problem.
Addy also said Ulva House was already in poor condition in 2018 and has deteriorated since, but the basic structure “is sound”. Plans to develop it as a heritage centre failed after construction costs soared, he continued, while detailed discussions are ongoing with a prospective tenant who would repair it and turn it into a boutique hotel.
Addy added that existing board members had suggested – not promised – they would stand down prior to the AGM, but had changed their minds in order to “provide continuity”.
He also said there had been no efforts by the previous board to stop Waller being elected at the AGM: “We all have strong opinions about the guy but I didn’t campaign, no,” he said.
He said it is for the new board, which has met just once, to plot a way forward, but agreed with the idea that a lack of capacity – in a community of just 400 people in north west Mull and Ulva – was part of the problem.
He believes the woodland company could split, with a new group taking on Ulva alone, or it could merge with the larger Mull and Iona Community Trust, which already runs houses and other assets on Mull.
“We know that Ulva needs sorting one way or another and I agree that it doesn’t make sense to keep it under the woodland company forever,” he said.
Munro said a change of ownership organisation could be the way forward. “We need to get rid of that ‘us and them’ mentality,” she said. “At the end of the day, we all still want the same thing, which is for the island to thrive.”
