Creating Affordable House Sites
A piece of common grazings has been separated from the rest of the hill by the new road, and the grazings committee is willing to release the land for housing – despite having an area of common grazing which is a tenth of the size, and more shareholders than any other township in Sleat.
We have conducted a lot of research into the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 and crofting legislation, and sought advice from the Community Land Unit and the Scottish Crofting Foundation in working out how we could acquire the land and release it from crofting tenure for development.
The Highland Small Communities Housing Trust conducted a successful a feasibility study in 2009-2010 and established that it is possible to develop the site, but is more expensive to do so than initially thought – they would need a minimum of 5 households interested in a house site in order to take the project forward.
