THE FIRST sod on a long-awaited housing development in Plockton is expected to be cut next week, raising hopes a steep decline in the primary school roll will be reversed and community activities boosted.
Lochalsh and Skye Housing Association is to build 24 homes at Burnside, 15 for affordable rent and nine for shared equity, in a scheme community leaders regard as vital to Plockton’s future.
Les Taylor Construction has been appointed as the main contractor and is due to start on site in January 2009 and complete in March 2010, director of Lochalsh and Skye HA, Lachie MacDonald told The Oban Times.
Laying out the importance of the scheme in terms of much-needed jobs and homes, Mr MacDonald said: ‘The development of 24 new houses at Plockton is a tremendous project which will provide employment opportunities during the construction phase at a time when new work is at a premium.
‘On completion, the houses which are both for rent and for sale on a shared equity basis, will go a long way to meeting the housing needs of the village and the surrounding area for the forseeable future.’
Plockton Community Council chairman Charlie MacRae was in little doubt what 24 affordable homes would mean for Plockton.
He told The Oban Times: ‘This will be of great help to the village, especially with the school roll down from 80 to 20 in the past 10 years.
‘If we did not build these houses, the school would close.
‘We have 71 people on the waiting list who are showing Plockton as a preference for a house, so we hope with 24 houses we are bound to get some families.
‘I’m supposed to be cutting the first turf, the housing association told me the first Monday after New Year. We have waited a long time for this - different things have kept it back.
‘We have more than 50 holiday homes in Plockton. In my own street, High Street, there are 43 houses and at the moment there are 18 of them lying empty.
‘Plockton’s become a holiday place - they call it God’s waiting room. But hopefully this development is going to help change Plockton a wee bit. We have no youngsters and the local clubs are really struggling because there’re not enough young folk.’
Meanwhile, Lochaber Housing Association has drafted an urgent plea to the Scottish government to help unfreeze funding for new projects.
LHA chief executive Blair Allan told The Oban Times: ‘We have agreed a submission to the housing minister Stewart Maxwell in relation to the difficulties that the current grants regime presents to the association and we await the outcome to that.
‘Hopefully the minister will acknowledge the difficulties we have been facing and introduce some flexibility in the grants regime to make developments more feasible for us.
‘We are ready to go with several developments at Claggan, at Inverlochy and at Heathercroft, but they really are dependent on the minister’s deliberations on our submission.
‘We are looking forward to the minister responding positively.’
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