We are delighted to have now completed the purchase of the Kershader Resource Centre bringing another useful asset on the Pairc estate into community ownership.
The Trust originally began looking into purchase of the building in 2016 and with development funding from the Scottish Land Fund, we employed consultants to perform an energy audit and assess future uses of the building.
Priorities for the Trust then took a different turn, with the development instead of our affordable housing units in Gravir, but we returned to the Resource Centre idea in 2019 when we refreshed the original community consultation to ensure support was still there, and reapplied to the Land Fund.
We were advised to go through the Asset Transfer Request process to acquire the building – the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 introduced this legislation so that community bodies can make requests to all local authorities, Scottish Ministers and a range of public bodies for any land or buildings they feel they could make better use of.  We were very grateful to receive help with this application from others in the Community Land Trust Outer Hebrides network who had already been through the process and the Development Trusts Association for Scotland. DTAS especially helped translate some of the terminology used in the ATR, and explain the legislation from both party’s viewpoint.
We submitted the ATR to the Comhairle in February 2020 and despite the impacts of the Covid pandemic, were able to receive a positive outcome to this application in August 2020.
Our purchase funding was agreed in September 2020 and we could finally see the finishing line in this long running project. It has been especially useful to have a development officer assist us with the Scottish Land Fund process, to make sure our applications fit in with the Committee’s timetable, and generally make sure we have had everything in place for a successful project. Highlands & Islands Enterprise staff perform this role and the staff at The Lottery who administer the fund are excellent too.
The Trusts solicitors, Lindsay’s, then took over with the legal paperwork and we were pleased to hear the Council solicitors found them excellent to deal with, completing as intended on January 28th 2021.
The 3 community groups who currently use the building are able to ease into the new arrangement over the next year, thanks to funding from the Crown Estate which will cover our expenses and help us all transition into the new responsibilities. That does feel daunting, but overall we are pleased to see this multi-use community space retained for its existing users – located next to the Ravenspoint centre, another community run enterprise, it has a prime location for people to access facilities and we felt it was important to make sure it was not lost for the future.
We share the building with Pairc Playgroup who run their excellent childcare facility from the building, when they are not out and about in their new bus on Outdoor play sessions. It is vitally important for us to have wrap around childcare available for working parents within Pairc and the building is in a great location for the morning commute.
The Pairc Community Council had a resurgence of support in 2019 bringing their committee to 10 and they operate a small gym from the building, which is well used especially by our older residents who like the exercise bike and treadmill for lower impact exercise when the weather is not at its best.
We really hope this asset and the facilities it houses will help our community to thrive for the future and we thank all those who helped the Pairc Trust turn this idea into a reality.
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