Strathard Community Council meetings are held 8 times a year, on a Thursday evening at 7.15 pm. Half an hour prior to our meetings a local Stirling Councillor holds a surgery for residents who wish to raise issues or concerns.
Next Community Council Meeting – Aberfoyle Memorial Hall Aberfoyle Thursday 2nd of February 2023 19:15
COOP Community Ownership Project Appendix 5-Community Consultation Aberfoyle Co Op Business Plan_FINAL VERSION
Following the decision made by the Coop Project Team and promulgated at the SCC meeting in May 2021 not to pursue community purchase of the Coop the Business Case which includes the Options Appraisal and the results of the community consultation process have been uploaded and can be found at here on the website using the links above. The Business Case is missing some information which would only have been necessary had the decision been to move forward to a Scottish Land Fund stage 2 application. The missing information is in regard to the valuation of the property (an estimate was used) and the final community delivery team. Neither pieces of information were constraining factors in the decision and would have required the SCC to fund their delivery which was deemed unnecessary in the current circumstances. The main reasons for not taking the project forward are stated below:
- The poor state of 2/3rds of the building and the structural engineer’s report that it probably only had 3-5 years of useful life before as a minimum the roof would need to be replaced.
- The fact that the later additions were unheated and only suited in their current form to be used for chilled and frozen retail which would require significant redevelopment investment to meet our purposes for something which may only have a very limited useful life.
- The difficulty in attracting retailers to use part of the building to help with the financing given that after 3-5 years the building could be out of use for a considerable time to allow for either a roof replacement or complete demolishment.
- The key unknowns on the likelihood of eventually gaining planning permission to create additional floors to accommodate single living accommodation because the building is situated on a flood plain – the fact that the right of way which could have provided safe egress for tenants had been incorporated into gardens of houses situated adjacent to the footpath and the requirement to develop detailed plans to enable the LLTNP to evaluate the impact on light reflection etc. for the adjoining properties to name but 2 prevented us getting into meaningful pre planning dialogue with the LLTNP planning team in the timescales available to us.
- The difficulty of ensuring the community could repurpose the current building such that it met the aspirations of the community and could be self-financing without the revenue stream which would be available from renting.
- While there may have been an appetite to take the building on recognizing that in the short term the venture may need ongoing community fund raising to maintain it to the required standard it was recognized that this could never be a long term solution and without a clear route to how sufficient revenue could be generated to finance community use of the lower floors the risk to the long term viability of the Project were deemed to be too great.
While the final result was disappointing it has not diminished the desire of the SCC and SCT to pursue other opportunities for community benefit should they arise in the future.
Please send any questions you wish to address to the meeting to hello@ccstrathard.org
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