Tayvallich Estate faces uncertain future once more
Concerns have been raised in the Tayvallich community where rented homes and over a thousand of acres of land in the Knapdale area, designated for nature restoration, could be up for sale in just three weeks’ time.
The announcement of the potential sale comes less than two years after the 3,000-acre Tayvallich Estate was sold, along with its tenanted houses, to a rewilding company that aims to combine nature recovery with community prosperity.
Although half of the estate was sold to a charitable trust in June this year for £3.2 million, Highlands Rewilding is now facing a financial crisis with debts of £11 million - even after some refinancing - due to be repaid by January next year.
The 1,300 acres of land bought by the Barrahormid Trust has been designated permanently for biodiversity and community benefit and will be unaffected by the potential sale in October.
Martin Mellor, chairperson of the Tayvallich Initiative, which manages a small pocket of land and some houses on behalf of the community, told the Advertiser: “The community in Tayvallich was concerned to hear of the proposed sales with a quick time frame. Tayvallich Initiative is looking at options from the community perspective and will convene a community meeting to discuss.”
Villagers expressed their concerns at a meeting in Tayvallich on August 30 and CEO of Highlands Rewilding Jeremy Leggett this week addressed many of the issues raised, stressing that the sale will only go ahead if the company cannot raise sufficient equity by the end of October.
Mr Leggett admitted that borrowing £12 million to buy Tayvallich Estate had been a precarious move.
“We always knew our plan was risky, and we always knew we would have to pay the loan back because it was essentially a 12-month bridging loan,” he said.
“The purpose of Highlands Rewilding Ltd is nature recovery and community prosperity through rewilding taken to scale. That cannot be done without financial institutions, such as pension funds, investing extremely large sums which hasn’t happened yet.”
Mr Leggett also responded to concerns regarding the rights of the company’s current tenants at Tayvallich, saying that Highlands Rewilding has already offered to sell tenanted houses to tenants ‘at fair valuation’.
He added: “These will be sold with rural housing burdens (RHB) attached. The RHB includes a covenant for the property to be used as a primary residence.”
Regarding those residents currently renting properties on the estate, Mr Mellor stressed that not all tenants would be in a position to buy their homes, but he welcomed the stipulation regarding how the properties will be used in the future.
“A key aspect of any sale is to apply rural housing burdens to each property sold to ensure they are used as primary residences, and Highlands Rewilding have committed to this,” he said.
“It’s great that the first RHBs in the area will be created. This reflects Highlands Rewilding’s commitment to community prosperity, reflecting an aspect of the widely-lauded memorandum of understanding signed between Highlands Rewilding and Tayvallich Initiative last year.”
The memorandum of understanding (MoU) is also supposed to ensure that the community is offered six-months’ notice of the sale as part of a community right-to-buy clause, however, this has not been given.
Mr Leggett said on Tuesday September 10 that he would have liked to have adhered to the six-month notice period.
He said: “With the benefit of hindsight, we should have suggested the community consider an offer for the land earlier, but we were expecting that we would be able to restructure the debt, i.e. extend the timeline.
"Because of the imperative of debt repayment, regrettably the community would have the same timeline as everyone else: bids in by December 10.”
He added that the memorandum of understanding that his company created with the local community was not legally binding.
“The MoU is not legally binding since it’s not possible to set all of the objectives into law,” he said.
“The MoU is therefore a goodwill hand-shake agreement or gentlemen’s agreement, and it has been welcomed widely across the country as a pioneering development in landowner–community relations.”
Apprehension has been expressed further afield about the company’s massive debts and being potentially forced to sell not just large swathes of its land around Tayvallich, but also large parts of two other estates it owns in Inverness-shire and Aberdeenshire.
The Scottish Land Commission issued a statement on September 7 saying: “We have welcomed the innovative approaches to community involvement that Highlands Rewilding has been able to take, but the model of acquiring land at this pace and scale carries clear risks.”
The spokesperson also highlighted the importance of abiding by agreements previously made with the Tayvallich community: “If the company now needs to sell land quickly it is important that local communities have meaningful time to consider purchase and influence the outcome, in line with the memorandum of understanding between Highlands Rewilding Ltd and the community at Tayvallich. It is unlikely relying on open-market sales will secure long-term community interests.”
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