Steering Group Update, September 2014

LEADHILLS COMMUNITY BUYOUT NEWSLETTER

Please find enclosed a copy of the Leadhills Community Buyout Newsletter which has been put through the letterboxes in Leadhills this week.

On the 18th January 2014 a meeting attended by a hundred residents was held at the Village Hall to introduce the idea of our community registering an expression of interest in a community buyout initiative if the Hopetoun Estate decides to put land in Leadhills on the market.

Since the Public Meeting in January, we have so far collected almost 150 forms of support from members of the community. That is a bit over half of the registered voters in the village. Please let us know if you have not signed yet your form of support but you would like to.

The group has also met with a number of organisations involved in community development to learn from their expertise. These include the Hometown Foundation, Development Trusts Association, and the Southern Uplands Partnership. We met as well, as per their request, with Hopetoun’s factor to exchange views about the challenges that face the village.

The next step towards registering an interest on land in and around Leadhills is to identify exactly what land is owned by Hopetoun. That job has to be done by the Registers of Scotland. Their research fees will be paid by a grant called Investing in Ideas, a fund created to support Community Right To Buy initiatives, and to which we are in the process of applying for support.

Once the Registers of Scotland gives us the details of what land in and around Leadhills is owned by Hopetoun, we will make that information publicly available for transparency and for the benefit of the village.

We hope that by the end of 2014 we will be in a position to start filling the paperwork to register an expression of interest on the land owned by Hopetoun in and around Leadhills.

Further Information

The group has made it of importance to keep everyone informed with an opportunity to become involved. To stay up-to-date with progress please visit www.leadhillscommunity.org or come along to any of the steering group meetings which are held at the Hopetoun Arms on the second Wednesday of the month and commence at 7:30pm.