Taymount and Five Mile Woods Project
Monthly Update for Stanley and District Community Council Meeting 11 September 2018
1. The Taymount and Five Mile Woods Steering Group is meeting monthly, with sub-groups meeting to progress issues in between.
The Steering Group meeting on 20 August discussed:
* feedback on Community Asset Transfer Scheme (CATS) from meeting with Hamish Murray and Rebecca Carr of Forest Enterprise Scotland at Inver on 9 August
* organisational matters
* progress with partnerships, funding and resources
* communications, internal and external
2. On 3 September, three representatives of the Steering Group met with two trustees of Dronley Community Woodland (DCW), Auchterhouse. DCW embarked on CATS in February 2017 for acquisition of the local 50 hectare Dronley Wood and has just been invited to submit a formal bid to Forestry Commission Scotland. Hearing about their project, CATS experience and advice was very helpful.
3. On 5 September, five representatives of the Steering Group met with Lynn Molleson of Community Ownership Support Service (COSS), a Scottish government-funded organisation set up to assist groups in acquisition of land or buildings. This was an extremely useful meeting which broadened our knowledge and perspective on the Community Empowerment Act, the CATS process ahead and gave us some very useful organisational and timeframe guidance. A principle piece of advice is to make contact with Scottish Land Fund (SLF) asap. COSS support will be ongoing and free of charge.
4. A Community Engagement sub-Group, which includes a representative from West Stormont Historical Society, is currently meeting weekly to produce a Community Engagement Plan to propose to the Steering Group meeting on 17 September. COSS advice has already been very helpful in that exercise. It is intended to develop an increasing public profile for the project over the coming months including a social media presence, posters, surveys, guided woodland walks, press articles, etc, leading up to a programme of drop-in community engagement events in different local community venues.
5. Councillor Grant Laing included the project in his “Notes from a Councillor” for the current edition of Dunkeld and Birnam’s regular newsletter “The Bridge”, our first piece of local publicity, for which many thanks.
6. Stanley Development Trust is offering help with setting up a Facebook page and a group email.
7. The Steering Group will shortly be considering an appropriate membership format for the project.
8. The Steering Group is auditing its skills and capacity and will be seeking to recruit additional members to ensure appropriate breadth of competence, representation and resilience for the challenging task ahead.