Construction to Begin at Neilston Community Windfarm

With final stages of funding in place, construction work is due to start at a £15 million Community Windfarm in Neilston, East Renfrewshire by the end of the month. The four turbine, ten megawatt capacity windfarm is set to earn the Neilston community almost £10million over the next 25 years.  These funds will go a long way towards creating a sustainable and successful future for Neilston. 

Construction of the £15million windfarm has been part funded through a £300,000 investment from Social Investment Scotland, Scotland’s leading alternative funder to the third sector. The trust has also secured funding from Big Issue Invest, CAF Venturesome, West of Scotland Loan Fund and the Scottish Government.

This unique project, a joint venture between Neilston Development Trust and Carbon Free Developments Limited, a small commercial windfarm developer, is the first of its kind in Scotland.  Four large turbines with a total maximum output of 10MW, will be constructed on the site of the old Drumgrain landfill on the Kingston Road. (10MW is about twice Neilston’s total consumption of electricity per year). The electricity goes into the grid in the normal way, contributing to Scotland’s national targets for green energy, and Neilston shares in the profits from the energy sold. 

 For some time, Neilston Development Trust has held an ambition to become involved in community renewables.  The Trust was approached by Carbon Free in 2009 and was quick to seize the opportunity on offer. 

 Neilston’s Town Charter lists more than forty community projects, which will be the focus for the income generated. Established in 2009, the Charter was stimulated by the Trust and is the product of collaboration between local people, council and other agencies with the aim of setting out a vision for a sustainable and prosperous community spanning the next 20 years.  

 Within this list of projects, the Trust has identified three for local discussion and development: the creation of attractive social spaces that are pivotal in the daily life of the town; the development of business plans to create new industries and jobs and the creation of a free Wi-Fi cloud allowing wider access to the Internet. 

 Andrew Jones, chair of Neilston Community Trust, said:  ““We could not be more excited for construction to begin on the Neilston Community Windfarm. It means that we are one significant step closer to achieving a dream that we have all worked so hard for over the last few years. 

 “This will be the first windfarm in Scotland to be developed by a commercial company and a community in a Limited Liability Partnership. Not only will it make an incredible difference to the future of our community, but it will also go some way towards achieving the Scottish Government’s target of 500 megawatts of community and locally-owned renewable energy by 2020.

“We are at a crucial point of the Trust’s development, moving from a reliance on volunteer capacity towards sustainability as a well founded social enterprise, loyal to our vision.”

 Alastair Davis, chief executive of Social Investment Scotland, said:  “With its broad range of ambitious projects aimed at transforming the lives of the local community, Neilston Development Trust has grown to become one of the most respected social enterprises in the UK. The creation of an urban windfarm is truly visionary in its objective of both securing the future of Neilston whilst contributing towards the Government’s overall goals for renewable energy. We are delighted to be working with the team at the Trust and look forward to helping them deliver the project.”

 Energy Minster, Fergus Ewing, said:  “The Scottish Government is committed to helping communities enjoy the social and financial benefits of developing their own renewable energy.

 “I am delighted we have been able to support the Neilston community in taking this step towards harnessing their wind resources. 

“This loan is in effect a pilot loan from a new fund we will be offering next year to support more communities across Scotland receive access to finance at the post-planning stage.

“I am grateful to Social Investment Scotland for providing the vehicle for that support to Neilston, and I look forward to seeing the local community reap the considerable benefits which will surely flow in the years to come.”

Lambhill Stables have endured arson attacks, vandalism and funding crises, but the staff and volunteers of the north Glasgow community hub refuse to be beaten. They have transformed a derelict building into a thriving centre and have become the latest nominees for the Evening Times Glasgow Community Champion Awards.

The 156-year-old stables were derelict for 40 years, yet the site is now a symbol of a motivated community in action. The team responsible for this £1.5million renovation recently hosted an ‘SOS’ family open day to raise awareness of their financial plight.

After two recent arson attacks, which wrecked a building, a workshop and tool shed, they lost Climate Challenge funding, which paid for some staff and sessional workers. The stables opened last June to involve local people in recreational activities such as fitness walks, heritage trails, art classes and a bike club.

It also works with offenders to help them learn skills, including gardening and joinery. Mary Millson, who nominated the team, said: “Without this community hub, Lambhill would have few recreational facilities.

“It gives the community something to feel proud of. To see their hard work hampered by vandals on many occasions must be so disheartening, but I am so pleased they did not give up. Now we need funding to back them up”

To view a short video in support of Lambhill Stables click here

To see something of Lambhill Stables’ community garden click here

US evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson was in the UK last month to talk about the field study he has been running for six years in his home town of Binghamton, a suburb of New York in economic decline.

“There are things that are natural to a field biologist, and one of them is to study species in their natural environment,” explains Wilson. “Jane Goodall [famous for her studies of chimpanzees] has the Gombe Stream Park [Tanzania] and Darwin’s finches are studied in the Galápagos, so why don’t we study humans in the context of their everyday life?”

In 2006, Wilson decided to study the 47,000 residents of Binghamton. He hoped that by observing, making predictions based on his theories and then staging interventions to see if those predictions are confirmed, the field study would generate evidence for his evolutionary theories and, in the process “make the world a better place too”.

Wilson’s theories are contrary to what we have been told for the last 30-odd years, ever since Richard Dawkins published The Selfish Gene. In contrast to Dawkins, Wilson argues that genetic self-interest is not humankind’s default setting and says we are altruistic and co-operative by nature. Prosociality, as he terms it, is a behaviour that gives a group a genuine competitive advantage.

“Selfishness beats altruism within groups, [but] altruistic groups beat selfish groups, and everything else is commentary,” says Wilson.

The idea of testing out these ideas in the field with work in communities was new when Wilson began, as, with the help of a team of graduates and undergraduates, he attempted to measure levels of co-operation across the city. Surveys were carried out among school students, asking them to rate statements such as: “I think it is important to help other people.” A map was then created with hills to represent the areas with high co-operation, and valleys representing the low co-operation areas.

The team tried to confirm these results by carrying out tests such as dropping letters to see if they got posted and going into schools to play games measuring co-operation. They even canvassed Binghamton neighbourhoods on Halloween and Christmas to see which were lit more decoratively because they believed that the more holiday decorations a neighbourhood had, the more nurturing it was, and so the better its civic health.

Wilson then kicked off a number of local projects in order to see if he could use what he calls his “evolutionary toolkit” to improve levels of co-operation. The design-your-own-park competition, for example, was supposed to pit neighbourhoods against each other in friendly competition. His educational programme, similarly, was set up to encourage co-operation and friendly competition using design features based on the principles developed by Nobel-prizewinner Elinor Ostrom, including a strong sense of community, a safe environment, and graduated rewards and sanctions.

Reviews of his ambitious Binghamton Neighbourhood Project vary from wild enthusiasm, through to bemusement and some fairly patronising write-offs. One recurring question is: what does evolution have to do with all this? In the New York Times, Mark Oppenheimer wondered if Wilson is not “being a little hasty” in “co-opting most any idea he likes as evidence of cultural evolution”. There are a few queries, too, about his methodology, given the enormous scale of the project and an approach that can appear scattershot.

Wilson is disarmingly honest about the fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants nature of the research and has previously paraphrased Einstein by saying: “If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be research.”

As for results, the work is still at an early stage but Wilson points to his academic programme for at-risk students where the students significantly outperformed their comparison group in a randomised controlled trial. The students, who had failed at least three out of five courses in their previous year, were made to feel part of a special unit in an extremely safe and nurturing environment, given lots of short-term incentives and genuine responsibility in running the programme.

Having been out in the cold for decades, his theories are now finding favour with politicians and policy thinktanks on both sides of the Atlantic who are desperate to engage communities in their own neighbourhoods to work together at solving intractable social ills more effectively and cheaply than the state.

They resonate too with questions about communities and co-operation in the age of social media that sociologists such as Richard Sennett are grappling with, and the wellbeing agenda being pushed by economist Richard Layard.

Wilson was in the UK at the invitation of the Co-operative Group, which is keen to make a case that co-operative behaviour is the norm, not the exception. “We want people to begin thinking differently, to realise that the norm is not the man who doesn’t get his round in when everyone is in the pub, but the man who does,” says the Co-op’s head of social goals Paul Monaghan. The group is considering setting up a UK version of Binghamton, and is talking to Wilson about how this could work.

In the US, Mary Webster describes herself as “this little mouse in David’s maze, behaving just the way I should”. The 71-year-old has been involved in community work in her home town of Binghamton for over a decade, but a couple of years ago her group, Safer Streets, became one of several taking part in Wilson’s field study.

Webster says that slowly she can see some results. She is now in charge of three design-your-own park competitions, and she says that some neighbours with whom she had been clashing turned up out of the blue to one of the block parties with a huge tray of tacos. “That’s the sort of thing that gives me a shiver down my back,” she says. “Local schools are now coming to us, we’re talking to the city council, people seem to be taking us more seriously.”

But it’s slow work, she concedes. “You know the funniest thing? David thinks I’m some sort of incredible example of altruism. But I started all this because the neighbourhood was going downhill and I didn’t want my house to get less valuable. So really, I’m as self-interested as anyone. What do you think of that?”

Wilson laughs when I relay Mary’s words. “Mary told me that the very first day we met,” he says. “But in fact, she could express her self-interest in any number of ways – by leaving the neighbourhood, by investing in a security system, by attempting to drive out the bad element, and so on. Instead, she expresses it by working to improve the whole neighbourhood. If she succeeds, then she will share in the improvement of the neighbourhood, but it will be at great personal cost. That’s altruism defined in behavioural terms. Perhaps altruism makes the altruist feel good, or is performed out of a sense of duty, or to gain admission into heaven, or is based on a sense of enlightened self-interest. Insofar as they result in the same society-oriented behaviours, they can be regarded as functionally equivalent.”

He adds: “Perhaps Mary really is entirely self-interested in her own mind, but in my experience, it is extremely common for altruists to profess selfish motives as a way to downplay what they do. It’s not altruistic to wear altruism on your sleeve!”

To see a copy of the report click here

“Sharp elbows”: Do the middle-classes have advantages in public service provision and if so how?

Who gets what from local public services has never been such an important and contested issue. Fiscal austerity and the large scale budget cuts across the public sector mean that services are being remodelled, pared back and even deleted. The encouragement of ‘localism’ by the Coalition Government may lead to new forms of service delivery, but it may also lead to some groups securing a bigger share of the remaining cake than they might otherwise have been able to. This report provides a short synthesis of the academic research on how the middle classes fare in relation to local public services – research which was conducted prior to the spending cuts and localism. It addresses concerns in both academic research and in the policy and practice community that a demanding middle class can skew the benefits of local services to their own needs. The report should be of interest to anyone concerned with how to deliver public services according to need in the current financial and political climate.

Research Findings

• There is evidence that middle class, affluent individuals and groups are often advantaged in their use of local public services. However, there is only limited evidence on the scale of this advantage and the extent to which it ‘matters’ in a fundamental sense both for the winners and losers.

• Middle class advantage is secured via a variety of means. It can be gained as a result of the deliberate actions and strategies of affluent individuals and groups. However, it can also be an unintentional consequence of the actions and attitudes of service providers, as well as a product of broader policy and practice.

• High profile service areas such as schooling, health and neighbourhood planning can provide advantage to middle class service users. There are some commonalities as well as differences between the services in the means by which this is achieved.

• Middle class service users tend to have the kinds of ‘cultural capital’ (education, networks, skills and resources) which are useful in practical sense for negotiating with service providers. Importantly, this cultural capital also corresponds with the value set of bureaucrats with power and influence. There is the potential for an alliance to develop between middle class service providers and users which is detrimental to the interests of less affluent service users.

• There is a clear need for middle class advantage to be afforded more prominence as a policy problem – we are perhaps too used to seeing disadvantage as the problem and not considering its flip side. It may become more urgent to do this as public service contraction gathers momentum.

To see a copy of the report click here

Author: David Ross, Highland Correspondent, The Herald

A LEADING expert has called for the extension of a controversial initiative to bring Scottish land under community control.

In a new book Highland historian Jim Hunter, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of the Highlands and Islands, makes the case not just on social but also on cost grounds. 

He says the limited amount of public money invested in schemes to buy up land for communities has been well spent, particularly compared with the outlay on major public infrastructure projects, and concludes the initiative is providing a solution to the age-old Scottish problem of chronic depopulation in the hinterlands.

He challenges First Minister Alex Salmond to demonstrate the SNP Government’s commitment to community ownership by visiting an area where the initiative is thriving and taking advice from local people. 

He also throws down the gauntlet to Highland Liberal Democrat MP and Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander to make it easier for communities to buy land by relaxing Treasury rules on public land disposals. 

He reveals all of the public money spent on helping take over half-a-million acres of land into community control was equivalent to the bill for only 600 yards of Edinburgh’s trams. 

Also, the £30 million total, from public and lottery sources over two decades, that went to help communities buy their land from Assynt to Eigg and Knoydart to Gigha and South Uist, amounts to less than 7% of the cost of the five-mile M74 completion stretch of motorway in Glasgow. 

The £30m investment matches the subsidy farmers and landowners receive in Britain every three or four days. 

Mr Hunter says: “Community ownership’s price-tag is by no means excessive [and] at least as justifiable, on any cost-benefit basis, as other forms of state spending.”

He tells persistent critics of Eigg, which now enjoys virtually full employment and boasts a nationally acclaimed green energy grid that, of the £1.5m purchase price, only £17,000 came from public funds.

Community buyouts have been described by critics as waste of public money, serving only to increase subsidy dependence. To Mr Hunter, however, they are vitally important and have already achieved much, critically in job creation and halting, or in some areas reversing, the chronic rural depopulation which has blighted the Highlands and Islands for generations.

Knoydart, where there has been a 60% rise in population since the buyout in 1999, is a case in point. Taking account of these successes, he says he is perplexed by the minimal engagement of by the four men who have held the office of First Minister since 1999. He calls on Mr Salmond to put that right.

Mr Hunter believes a full First Ministerial visit would send out a positive message: “People on the community ownership front line would be given a chance to explain to the man in charge of Scotland’s Government just what is needed by way of policy initiatives if the community land sector is to grow further.”

He wants Mr Alexander to find a way of relaxing the Treasury rules on publicly owned land disposals which mean communities have to pay the market value for the likes of parcels of Forestry Commission woodland.

The historian recognises that one or more of the local land trusts in the Highlands and Islands could face financial difficulty, or even go under. 

“If or when this happens, critics and opponents of community ownership will insist the community ownership concept has thereby been invalidated. They will be wrong,” he said. 

“If the record of private land ownership in the Highlands and Islands was to be judged by the number of landlords who have gone spectacularly bust … then time would have been called on such ownership very many years ago.”

A Scottish Government spokesman said: “Community land ownership can bring tremendous benefits both to communities themselves and Scotland as a whole. 

“Land ownership is key to building independent, resilient rural communities and creating a sense of confidence and community empowerment.

“That’s why the First Minister and other Scottish Government Ministers continue to fully support buyouts and are committed to providing opportunities for rural communities to acquire land.

“The £6m Scottish Land Fund launched by the Scottish Government last month is designed to give more rural communities these opportunities.” 

The Carnegie UK Trust commissioned Mr Hunter to write the story of community buyouts over the past 20 years. He tells it in The Low Tide of the Sea to the Highest Mountain Tops, to be published by the Islands Book Trust next week on Mull at the annual conference of Community Land Scotland.

For copy of SAC Report click here 

Scotland is a step closer to having its own rural parliament to empower rural communities and give them a greater opportunity to influence decision-making, network and share expertise.

A report, published today, highlights the experiences of countries which already have rural parliaments, including the benefits and potential pitfalls, success stories and the various formats used.

And an initial meeting took place earlier this month to consider what Scotland’s rural parliament could look like and ensure it provides meaningful engagement for people living in rural communities.

The next step will be a meeting in May with representatives from existing European rural parliaments.

Rural Affairs Secretary Richard Lochhead said:

“Scotland’s rural areas have a vibrant and dynamic community spirit borne from a strong sense of place. Surrounded by the magnificent landscape for which our nation is famous and with so much of our world-renowned natural larder on the doorstep, there are many benefits to living in Scotland’s more rural areas.

“But the distances involved bring with them different challenges from those faced in less remote parts of the country. Scotland’s Rural Parliament will empower our rural communities, giving them a stronger voice and genuine access to decision-making. By doing this I am confident that our resilient and entrepreneurial rural communities will get the support and opportunities they need to flourish and grow.”

The Rural Parliaments in Europe report was produced for the Scottish Government by the Scottish Agricultural College (SAC) Rural Policy Centre. 

Dr Mike Woolvin, researcher with the Rural Policy Centre, said:  

“Our study found that Government involvement and commitment to setting up a Scottish Rural Parliament is important but that it must be done in partnership with others. Enthusiasm, engagement and drive from the grassroots is vital, as a Rural Parliament cannot be imposed from the top-down.  It is particularly vital that the Parliament is well resourced from a variety of sources and that recommendations are quickly translated into actions by policy-makers and politicians. There is great willingness from others involved in Rural Parliaments in Europe to share expertise.”

Welcoming the initiative, Vanessa Halhead, Director of the European Rural Community Association (ERCA) said:

“Rural Parliaments have proved themselves to be an excellent vehicle for giving the rural communities a strong presence and voice on the national stage.  For rural Scotland, this is the start of a very exciting initiative, and will have full support from ERCA.”

Background

The Rural Parliaments in Europe report by the Rural Policy Centre is available here: http://www.sac.ac.uk/ruralparliaments or for a PDF please call Chris Keddie on 0131 244 2598. The report looks at Rural Parliaments in six countries – Sweden, the Netherlands, Estonia, Finland, Hungary and Slovakia.  

The creation of a Rural Parliament for Scotland was included in the 2011-12 Programme for Government. A Rural Parliament is a facilitation process that will bring Government closer to rural Scotland, it is not the introduction of a further layer of Government.’

Organisations who attended the initial meeting to discuss the creation of a Scottish Rural Parliament included: Association of Scottish Community Councils, Development Trusts Association Scotland, Community Energy Scotland, Community Land Scotland, Community Woodlands Association, Scottish Community Alliance, Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, Southern Uplands Partnership, Carnegie UK, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Scottish Enterprise, COSLA, NFUS, Scottish Youth Parliament, Rural Policy Centre.  The second meeting will take place on May 29, 2012 and will also include representatives from existing European rural parliaments.

The European Rural Community Association (ERCA) is the network for the 23 national rural movements of Europe, who pioneered the Rural Parliaments. Sweden developed the Rural Parliament model in 1989, and its success has inspired many other countries.

Volunteers bring almost £2 million of added value to the transport mix in Scotland, according to a new State of the Sector report on community transport in Scotland compiled by the Community Transport Association. Over 100,000 people and 4000 voluntary groups across Scotland use community transport to access services and all told the sector’s £10 million income provides 3.5 million passenger journeys annually to mainly elderly and disabled people who cannot use mainstream transport services. 

“For the first time we have been able to identify the scale of transport provision by community groups, social enterprises and charities around the country” said John MacDonald, Director for Scotland at the Community Transport Association. “It has been particularly useful to quantify the extent to which volunteers contribute to enabling people to access services. From the groups we spoke to 2500 people give 280,000 hours of their free time each year to taking neighbours to the places they wish go. If each hour had to be paid for at the minimum wage rate then the bill would be close to £2 million.”

With mainstream bus services under pressure in many parts of Scotland, community transport is one way in which emerging gaps can be filled. However, the report shows that 70% of community transport operators say that their ability to plan services ahead is severely hampered as a result of short term commitment from key funders such as local authorities. 

Amongst the report’s recommendations are calls for the bus concessionary fare scheme to include community transport services. Though many community transport users hold a concession card they cannot currently use it on most of these services.

For full report click here

Author: Brian Wilson, WHFP 14 March 2012

FIFTEEN years ago, Scotland had the most inequitable distribution of land ownership in Europe – a state of affairs which engendered much political rhetoric accompanied by demands for action, usually in response to some particularly dubious transfer of ownership.

In 1997, a Labour government took the first political steps towards addressing that dishonourable legacy of history. The result was a package of useful measures, some of which were acted upon immediately and others which were bequeathed to the incoming Scottish Parliament to be translated into legislation.

But nobody on the land reform side of the fence ever intended that to be the end of the process. Giving crofting communities the right to buy their land, abolishing the feudal system and guaranteeing freedom to roam were the low-hanging fruit of land reform. The hard stuff was supposed to follow.

We are still waiting. Fifteen years later, Scotland continues to have the most inequitable distribution of land ownership in Europe. Not one line of legislation beyond what it inherited has been originated at Holyrood to address that reality. Meanwhile, the political rhetoric has subsided as if the subject had been quietly filed under “gone away”.

But for many communities and individuals throughout Scotland, it has not gone away. They still live under the petty tyrannies of landlordism or see the resources on their doorsteps being squandered in the name of sport. They watch schools and shops close and homes become holiday lets. They seethe quietly because that is the safest way to seethe. Or they leave.

Anyone who does not believe that such things go on in 21st-century Scotland should have been with me in Mull – itself a bastion of capricious private landlordism – this week. I was there for the annual conference of Community Land Scotland, the umbrella body for community-owned estates which now cover 500,000 acres of Scotland, most of it in the West Highlands and Islands.

Put a few people with an interest in this subject together and the horror stories soon begin to flow, particularly from places where there is a stirring of interest in community ownership. Abuses of power, frustration of economic activity, speculation in assets such as forestry and quiet depopulation are all regular ongoing features of life in every corner of landlord-controlled rural Scotland. The land question may have been filed away by Holyrood but it is still very much alive in the real world.

There is an alternative path and, for the past 20 years, communities in the West Highlands and Islands have been clearing it for others to follow. More than 20 community-owned estates now add up to these 500,000 acres, and the results have been unerringly positive. At least another dozen are waiting in the wings. The potential is enormous and could transform the prospects for vast areas of rural Scotland.

At present, there are a lot of anniversaries to celebrate. Community-owned Assynt estate, where the people gave the lead to the politicians, is coming up for its 20th birthday. Revitalised Gigha, which previously was the subject of a cruel game of pass-the-parcel, today celebrates its tenth year of democratic control. The biggest and most ambitious buy-out, South Uist, has just marked its fifth anniversary by finalising a windfarm deal that will bring in £20 million for re-investment in economic development.

Sadly, there will not be many new birthdays to celebrate for a few years. Having plateaued in the middle of the last decade, the community land movement then ran out of momentum – not due to lack of demand but to a total absence of political support. The Scottish Land Fund, which was the engine of the movement, was closed down; its role supposedly to be taken over by the Big Lottery.

That never happened. Of more than 60 applications related to land buyouts, only one has so far succeeded (though there are some still in the pipeline). The Big Lottery doubtless had other worthy priorities, but the inescapable point is that unless there is funding quite specifically devoted to support for land reform, it will not be used for that purpose. 

The old Scottish Land Fund, which did a fantastic job under the chairmanship of David Campbell, was made up of people who – crucially – believed in land reform, and it had a specific remit to “diversify the pattern of land ownership in Scotland”. Nobody doubts that there are other priorities for lottery funders within Scotland and, without such a remit, there is no particular reason why land buyouts should take precedence.

All of this takes on a particular relevance because there is to be a new Scottish Land Fund, eventually conceded by the current Holyrood administration. It is worth £6m over three years, which is not a lot, since land does not come cheap. The fund will cover the whole of Scotland and be co-administered by Highlands and Islands Enterprise and the Big Lottery. Why the Big Lottery is involved in distributing money not raised through the National Lottery is far from clear and, on past form, does not bode well. 

But the bigger point is that the progress of land reform should not depend either on a flea bite from the Scottish Government’s budget or on the vagaries of any lottery. It needs to be driven as a political priority fuelled by an understanding that the current structure of land ownership in Scotland represents a serious problem, both in terms of social justice and economic under-performance.

The SNP administration promised in its last manifesto to establish a land reform review group. If and when that happens, the remit and membership will be crucial. Will it be driven, as happened in 1997, by a belief that reform is necessary and the questions to be addressed are about means rather than ends? Or will the status quo remain an option? If so, it will not get very far.

For the great majority of rural communities which may aspire to controlling their own destinies and throwing off the heavy hand of landlord influence, the option simply does not exist. Outside of crofting areas, there is no community right to buy, far less financial support to advance such ambitions. These are the issues which a land reform review group must address – not the rhetorical question of whether land reform is a good idea.

James Hunter has just written a new book on the history of the community ownership movement in the Highlands and Islands which chronicles the events which have led to these 500,000 acres being under the democratic control of the people who live on them. He points out that all the public money committed to helping to achieve that outcome equates to what has been spent on constructing 600 yards of the Edinburgh tramway. Politics is, as ever, about priorities.

At a time when even the Scottish Football Association has realised that it might make sense for a “fit and proper person” test to be applied before putting up the welcome signs, vast estates still change hands in Scotland without the slightest regard for the implications for those who live on them, or how the land will be used. It is a very stupid way to run a country. Whether anything will have changed in another 15 years from now will have nothing to do with the constitutional debate and everything to do with whether the political will exists.

SCOTLAND’S coastal communities could be handed control of the country’s shorelines under plans that would bring them a multimillion-pound windfall. Devolving both the administration of the seabed off Scotland’s coasts and the booming income from renewable energy leases of up to £50 million annually by 2020 was described as offering the chance of rejuvenation for many remote and marginalised communities. The call, in a report by MPs, was described as “perfect” by Dr Michael Foxley, leader of Highlands Council. It piles pressure on the Treasury to devolve the Crown Estate in Scotland.

Yesterday the document by the Commons Scottish Select Affairs Committee was welcomed by the Scottish Government, and met with huge enthusiasm on the ground by community representatives, and seen as creating a unique opportunity for reform.

Dr Foxley said: “The Secretary of State for Scotland must enter into urgent discussions with the First Minister to ensure devolution of the Crown Estate responsibilities to a local level are implemented as quickly as possible. This is vital to the future well- being of coastline communities in our remote and island locations.”

Philip Maxwell, chairman of community-based Islay Energy Trust, said boosting local wealth by one-fifth would allow job-creation and infrastructure pro-jects, but added: “One should never underestimate how strong Treasury resistance can be but I think it will be very difficult for them because there is now such unanimity of purpose here.”

A Treasury spokesman said: “The Government will consider the recommendations of the report and provide a full response in due course. The Crown Estate is working hard to improve its communications and engagement in local areas and the Government supports this work. We have also set up the Coastal Communities Fund, which will deliver a multimillion-pound boost to coastal communities in Scotland and across the UK.”

Gareth Baird, the Crown Estate’s Scottish commissioner, said: “Our commitment to Scotland and its economy remains full and whole-hearted, and we will be studying the report’s recommendations closely.”

Committee chairman Ian Davidson was critical of the Crown Estate Commission (CEC) and spoke of an “accountability vacuum” in Scotland, adding: “We visited various communities in Orkney, Shetland, Caithness, Argyll and the Western Isles and took evidence from every interested party we could find. Considering the nature and extent of the problems identified to us, almost exclusively in relation to the marine and coastal assets in Scotland, we have had to conclude the CEC should no longer be the body responsible in these areas.”

The Glasgow South West MP said the key was maximising the local benefit from resources, adding: “We are convinced the only way this can be done is by devolving as much of the responsibility – and benefit – down to the level of those local communities as possible.”

The report said devolution to Holyrood should be conditional on the Scottish Government handing down the powers and revenues to communities.

Scottish Rural Affairs Secretary Richard Lochhead claimed credit for the suggested, two-stage model of devolution. He said: “Our progressive plans, which have also been backed by the Scottish Parliament, would see revenues from Crown Estate invested directly into local communities. The Scottish Government is clear this is the right approach – the communities most affected are the ones which should benefit.”

A Scotland Office spokesman said the report’s conclusions clashed with the previous position of the Scottish Government which offered no guarantee to pass on powers devolved to Edinburgh.

Taxpayers are stumping up half-a-million pounds to buy an ancient Scottish royal park even though it has been in public ownership for centuries.

The 453 acres of King’s Park below Stirling Castle – the last significant ancient property of the Scottish Crown not controlled by Scottish Ministers – is being sold off by the Crown Estate Commissioners for £1 million.

The people of Stirling will pay for more than half the sale price to secure the site for the town’s golf club, despite the public having effectively owned the land since the 12th century. 

Now leading land reform campaigner Andy Wightman is calling for answers from ministers and the local council.

The move comes when there are growing calls for the Crown Estate Commission’s (CEC) functions to be devolved to the Scottish Parliament with the CEC, which sends its income to the UK Treasury, ceasing to operate north of the Border.

According to Mr Wightman, an authority on common land and common good funds, the deal betrays the CEC as an organisation “… out for a quick profit at the expense of Scotland’s heritage”.

He said: “Over the past 50 years the CEC has managed the park as just another part of their commercial rural estate. Which is why, in 2006, it began secret negotiations to sell Stirling Golf Club lands they already leased.

“When news of this private deal broke there was an outcry and Stirling Council stepped in and agreed to acquire the parkland and land at the back of the castle for £600,000, funded with £150,000 from Stirling common good fund and £450,000 from the golf club, which would then be granted a 175-year lease.”

He said local people wanted to know why the fund, a reserve established for the benefit of the community, was being raided to pay for this. 

The community had come up with an imaginative alternative proposal that would restore this historic landscape as part of the wider restoration of Stirling Castle, but both the Secretary of Scotland (Jim Murphy) and the Scottish Government had refused to get drawn into the argument. Progress on the deal stopped with the credit crunch, but now it is back on the table. 

However, this time more land, another 92 acres, is included and the price is over £1m, “… with,” Mr Wightman said, “the common good fund forking out a whopping £567,000. This represents over 60% of its reserves, and for what? This land is crown land. It is Scottish public land. It should be administered by Scottish ministers, as nearly all other historic castles, palaces and royal parks are. 

“No public money should be needed to acquire control of this land, least of all the bulk of Stirling’s common good fund”.

He said it is particularly in-appropriate given the 2014 year of Homecoming and the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn.

“Why, when Scotland is in the midst of such historic times, is the Scottish Government sitting idly by while a common good fund is raided to pay for public land that already belongs to us, to be given away to a private golf club for 175 years? It is time to stop this madness.”

King’s Park Community Council wrote to the council: “In our opinion this is a serious mistake given that the recommendations about to be published in the Scotland Bill give every indication that Crown Estate management in Scotland will be returned to Scottish ministers.”

Alan Laidlaw, CEC’s head of new business development for the rural estate, said: “We have worked in partnership with Stirling Council and Stirling Golf Club to ensure local people benefit from the use of the land.” 

A spokesman for Stirling Council said: “The acquisition of the lands at King’s Park, using common good fund monies, will secure for all time coming the use of these lands by the public for recreational purposes.” 

A Scottish Government spokesman said: “If any party or individual believes public money is not being used properly and effectively, then a complaint can be made to Audit Scotland.”

The Herald sought a comment from Stirling Golf Club, but no-one was available.