The beautiful village of Kenmore in Perthshire. Photo: Iain Masterton
This article appeared in the Observer newspaper, another example of how cavalier the Scottish Government is at selling off chunks of Scotland to big business and wealthy individuals, our ports and all. Why be a nationalist party and do the work of a right-wing capitalist party? The proposals to privatise land is the alien Flamingoland by another name – Discovery Land Company.
In this instance the local MSP is ‘Honest’ John Swinney whose has done so much to support the tragic follies of the Murrells, and is now retired from high office. His reponse here is weak, timid and self-protective, the Honest John we have known and learned to distrust.
This is a blatant case of encouraging wealthy incomers to buy into Scotland and fence off the land around them for their personal use, an affront to the rights and traditions of indigenous communities. Moreover, someone who can pay a minimum of £3 million for a house won’t be motivated to join political marches for self-governance.
We ignore these profit-led developments at our peril. We remove land from the next generation. We allow in people who will never vote to reinstate this country’s rights because they will fear their privileges removed. If we ever want it back it will be offered at extortionate rates after a long expensive court battle. We are storing up trouble for ourselves when the revolution takes place.
At one time, locals and those visiting the village of Kenmore on the north-eastern banks of Loch Tay, Perthshire, were able to take a leisurely walk through the woodlands of the 180-hectare Taymouth estate, enjoying local wildlife, Victorian landscaping and views of imposing 19th-century Taymouth Castle. Today, in high summer and peak tourist season, would-be walkers are instead met with “path closed” signs and security warnings, while the castle – clad in scaffolding – is only visible from the roadside en route to nearby Aberfeldy.
According to campaigners, this, alongside the recent closure of local amenities such as a post office, hotel and boat hire company, is symptomatic of the “strangling” of Kenmore by developers who have bought up much of the village. Now an online campaign, Protect Loch Tay, aims to put a stop to plans by the US firm Discovery Land Company (DLC) to build a 320-hectare gated community on the Taymouth estate and neighbouring Glenlyon estate.
“They’re taking away ground that’s been an amenity for people for years and making it exclusive in the name of profit,” said taxi firm owner Rob Jamieson, who founded the Protect Loch Tay group. “This isn’t a hotel where you can take your wife out for a meal, or a golf course where you can go along and play. It’s all for their very rich members and not the community that’s already here.”
The impact on wildlife and the area’s natural beauty is also a concern, said Jamieson, as Loch Tay is home to beavers, otters and birds as well as rare fish species, and remains relatively unspoiled by the likes of speedboats and jetskis.
DLC describes itself as providing “luxury residential family homes built in private club communities”. Its “worlds”, as it calls them, include medical, recreational and educational facilities as well as shops and restaurants. Membership requires the purchase of a property, which can cost anything from $3 million to $50 million.
In a recent edition of its company magazine, an article outlines plans for “a community including 208 residential units and club suites” as well as a clubhouse, sports centre and wellness facility on the Taymouth and Glenlyon estates, the company’s first offering in the UK. The development, it notes, is just a 90-minute drive from Glasgow and Edinburgh – or 30 minutes by helicopter.
On a rainy afternoon last week, Loch Tay played host to fewer fishing boats, canoes and paddleboards than usual, but dogs and children still braved the beach, along with a stream of passersby. Opinions here seem mixed about the DLC proposals.
“People never like change but more money in the area is positive, I think,” said Megan McDaid, 34, who lives nearby. “If it means the castle and other places will be restored, then that’s great.”
A study of Loch Tay, soon to be prey to water skis. Photo: Andrew Ray
But others questioned the benefits to the local economy and community. “Kenmore does need some investment but this isn’t it,” another resident told the Observer. “It will benefit a tiny number of people and change the area’s character completely.”
The local MSP, John Swinney, said he was aware of concerns among some constituents and intended to meet them for further discussion. “With any development of this nature, it is essential that the views of local residents are considered and that any legitimate concerns are addressed sympathetically and as quickly as possible,” he said.
“To that end, it is my hope that those involved with this project will engage proactively with the local community and work collaboratively to address any outstanding issues.”
Mercedes Villalba MSP, Scottish Labour’s spokesperson for environment and biodiversity, recently proposed a Scottish parliament bill that would limit land ownership to 500 hectares unless a public interest test is passed. “For as long as Scotland’s land can be hoarded and developed by the super-rich to create their own elite ‘playground’, we are living closer to medieval feudalism than a just, equitable society,” she said of the Kenmore proposals.
“The high concentration of so much land in the hands of so few is central to the inequality that has blighted Scotland for centuries.”
A spokesperson for DLC told the Observer that the company is “committed to restoring the estate and securing a sustainable future for the local area in partnership with the community and with respect for the local environment.
“The community is being kept updated on progress via the Kenmore and District community council and the project website,” the spokesperson said.
But for Jamieson, whose Protect Loch Tay group has attracted almost 2,000 members in five weeks, the campaign is just beginning.
“I’m not an expert – I’m just a local person who doesn’t want to see the place spoiled,” said Jamieson. “They say they want to build a ‘community’ here, but we already have a community. These plans only exist to squeeze profit out of it.”
NOTES: Main article report by Eve Livingston.
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Grouse Beater 
Our politicians should be protecting Scotland. This SNP government has let us all down very badly.
This makes me so sad and I literally cried after reading it. I am reading Raynor Winn’s (writer of The Salt Path) 3rd book Landlines and in it they were walking in the north of Scotland. There are Comments in it comparing the lack of free to walk in England compared to Scotland! Something has to give soon! My parents and grandparents would be equally enraged if they were alive to see what has happened to Scotland in the last few years. Regards Sheena
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Reblogged this on Ramblings of a now 60+ Female.
“To that end, it is my hope that those involved with this project will engage proactively with the local community and work collaboratively to address any outstanding issues” said the local ‘nationalist’ MSP.
As with the SNP’s approach to the constitutional issue Pleading John begs for decency from avaricious developers with a voracious bordering on insatiable appetite for exploitative profit.
The ‘stronger for Scotland’ approach to protecting Scottish folk in a nutshell.
Housing is the issue in the home area. This is but one extreme example of the why of it. The outcome of it all is that local people are being replaced by people with more money than them. The values have rocketed for land and houses. The idea floated by john Swinney that there is still a debate to be had with regard to the development at Kenmore would indicate that the project had yet to be started rather than be well on its way to being completed. Swinney and Wishart would have been tapped up well in advance. Do not kid yourselves on that one. I am a Scottish Nationalist just in case anyone reading this might think I am a unionist taking the opportunity to have a dig at Honest John and his sidekick, Slippers.
The positives? Work. There is work in the area and it is in that type of work, physical work where local people are still in a majority. In the trades, building, labouring. fencing, driving machines. My wee brother, nephew and close pals and their bairns all have plenty of work just now. The negatives? The impact on our rights, the changing character of the area (if you are a local) and the rise in land and property values. The pitifuly deficient lack of affordable housing means that local peoplewill continue to be replaced by folk who have more money than them despite having work. Instead of a daughter going on to university and a son staying local both with move on for lack of housing. Eventually the place where we are still in the majority in the supply of physical labour will come in from outside. Essentially demand and supply determining where you can live. A policy of ghettoisation for some.
What about so called social housing? There isn’t anywhere near enough of it and the way that it is distributed at times is bordering on the schizophrenic. We in Aberfeldy are in a pool of people with Perth which is 32 miles to the south east, Rannoch 20 miles to our north, kenmore 6 miles to the East and Glen Lyon which runs for 30 miles, the start of it lies 8 miles from Aberfeldy. The council does house people when it can but just as often Perth people are offered rented accommodation in Feldy, Feldy and kenmore people can get offered housing in the schemes of Perth.
The wee-er places have lost their local population entirely, in Kenmore their are still some locals and in Aberfeldy we stand probably at around a 3rd of the population there.
Perhaps after reading that you would be surprised to hear that there has been a lot of housebuilding in the area. Once the homes are completed on the site of the old laundry there will have been close to 100 homes built in Aberfeldy alone. That’s a good thing right? The much touted Scottish government drive to solve the housing crisis remember? I know of 3 locals/local families who could afford to buy a house in the estate up by Duntaylor. The housing at Fishers laundry was all sold before a brick was in the ground and no-one I have talked to yet knows anyone who has bought one. The Fishers Laundry build has no homes for rent to my knowledge. The truth of it seems to be that the SGs big show of building houses a few years back was never about solving any housing crisis, the developers knew where their market was and it was never in places like Aberfeldy. It was clearly about making money and profit. Why could they not have made a few bob and provided homes for local people at the same time? Every house built for sale now has the potential to add to the problem because of the prices they currently sell at and the effect on helping those prices climb further.
Swinney knows all of this. It is leaves all those who are being negatively affected feeling that they are powerless, in a state of being ‘just in the road’.
The billionaires development at Kenmore provides work at good rates but exacerbates the hosuing problem. This scheme has been buying businesses and closing them, buying houses and not renting them out, buying land and fencing it off.
This is not an issue that is limited to the people of the Breadalbane district of Highland Perthshire. It affects folk across the Highalnds and islands, the east coast, the borders, our towns and cities. Whether the Kenmore folk who have houses retain their their right to roam in the places they and their people had used since childhood will be able to be resolved in the courts. Unless affordable housing becomes available the writing seems to be on the wall for vast majority of locals who are not lucky enough to already be in a house in those areas where external demand is high.
It makes me question what we have become in Scotland. Something definitely changed after the referendum when the old Scottish government was replaced by the new one. Everything seems to be for sale. We are being told now we should just suck it up. Maybe the ground work done by the neo-liberals in the Thatcher era all those years ago has. The resistance to it in Government seems to have ended with Sturgeon’s government. The entire nation seems to be comprised of dwindling communities.
But it’s only getting underway because locals have sold up to developers.
I am no sure what point you want to make or what evidence you have, you offer none, or if there were sales, how were they done – all at once, or by stealth? Laws ought to be intact stopping land companies appropriating swathes of Scotland by any method. That area is one of outstanding beauty; regulations exist to stop unwanted exploitation.
Grouse beater, a local family, originally farmers beside Kenmore who owned land adjacent to the river Tay at Kenmore sold it to the US consortium. They had developed part of their farm for tourism. It comprised a caravan park, shop, restaurant and bar. Your point stands nontheless.
As for areas of outstanding beauty. It used to be difficult to gain permission to build around Loch tay. There are big houses all the way up the Northside now by the shoreside. A marina near Croft na Cabar on the south side. All the way up the south side of the Loch are holiday homes. Not all development is negative but something changed and money can do what it wants wherever it wants seemingly without much in the way of consideration for factors affecting people who live and work there. Particularly locals whose numbers are low, generally don’t have much money and as a result little collective clout.
That does happen Marlene but how many of us own land or have any say whatsoever in how that land is used no matter how treasured it may be or the sense of belonging we have to it? In the situation where houses are being sold you have to take a step back and look at the environment that has been created over the past 4 decades. It is a more gradual process but has been accelerating at a bewidldering rate these past 5 or 6 years. The dynamic involved with the movement of people, why they move, the different pressures on who is left. What happens to homes when people die, etc.
The campaign to stop it needs boosted and Yousaf warned.
Perth & Kinross Council’s “Planning & Placemaking Committee” has 10 members. 2 x SNP, 1 x “Scot” Lab, 1 x “Scot” LibDem, 1 x “Independent” & 5 x “Scot” C&Un members. I wonder whether they have so far played a role in this development ? Planning and “Place-Wrecking” ?
This all looks like a new round of the Enclosures that removed most Common land hundreds of years ago, enclose, remove unprofitable people and replace with, not sheep but select profitable people… later.. hire a “Scotsman” to wear a kilt and play the pipes at the launch party for VIP guests and customers. I had hopes for better from the Scottish government. Thank you for posting this.
It would be interesting to see how many are invited to the opening, or who acquire other benefits.
Hi GM, My original comment was as much as response to the tone of the article as to its content. Thanks for your reply above. I agree with what you say and to be clear I’m as aghast at this proposed development as others are in these responses. I’ve walked over the Loch Tay Hills and know the area, though it’s a while since I’ve been in Kenmore itself. I’d be interested in hearing more about what you mention re a need “look at the environment that has been created over the past 4 decades.” And although they are very different kinds of development, this reminds me of the Flamingo Land project inasmuch as a huge public outcry has – so far – been instrumental in stopped it. Also be interested to know if you think planning permission for this project will get referred to ScotGov?