A remote Highland village community has been given a major boost in its unusual bid to buy land in a bombing range to increase its use as a tourist attraction.
The site in Sutherland is near the famous lighthouse at Cape Wrath, mainland Britain’s most northerly point.
Now the Scottish Land Fund (SLF) has awarded £22,500 to a development group to work-up a business plan and feasibility study so that locals at the nearest village of Durness – 10 miles away – can buy 111 acres of the cape.
Durness Development Group (DDG) said it has six months to submit its scheme, which would include asking for the money to buy the only land the Ministry of Defence does not own at the cape, which for 120 days of the year is a bombing range.
DDG director Neil Fuller said the award from the SLF meant that it was now pushing ahead with one of the country’s most unusual community buyouts.
Once DDG has worked up a proposal for a bunkhouse and toilets, it is likely to come back and ask for most of the £58,000 it believes it will need to buy the land – and also the money to develop the scheme.
Residents at Durness are mounting a community buyout under the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003.
There was once a full-time community of around 35 people living on the Cape in the 1930s. Today it is just John Ure, who runs the cafe by the lighthouse. He is also planning to install a public toilet and bunkhouse nearby.
At the centre of the unusual community buyout is just 111 acres around Cape Wrath Lighthouse.
Three years ago the MoD was halted in its £58,000 purchase of the land from the Northern Lighthouse Board, which would have added to the 25,000 acres it already owns in the area.
A development plan by consultants commissioned by DDG said Cape Wrath currently attracts around 6,000 visitors each year and could manageably be increased to 10,000.
The lighthouse could even be opened up to the public. The cape is estimated to be worth more than £600,000 to the nearby Durness economy.