Community purchase of Fountain Road Hall, Golspie, in jeopardy after church sets closing date: Plea made for timescale to be extended
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The Church of Scotland has made a 'surprise' move that, it is feared, could scupper a community purchase of its Fountain Road Hall in Golspie, which was put on the market in February.
A closing date has been set on the hall giving those interested in acquiring it around a month to submit an offer.
But the timeline is too tight for Go Golspie Development Trust, the organisation behind the community purchase. It will not know until November whether its application to the Scottish Land Fund for funding has been successful.
Go Golspie has now asked the Church of Scotland to reconsider the closing date and the church has agreed to give it further deliberation.
Fountain Road Hall is on offer for an asking price of £200,000. In recent years it has been extensively renovated with the help of public funding, and has been made available to local groups.
The announcement of the sale sparked a backlash at the time, with local residents claiming the church should have gifted it to the community because of the amount of public money spent on it.
Go Golspie Development Trust set up a sub group to push forward with the community purchase.
Trustee Richard Gale, Highland Council representative for East Sutherland and Edderton, said the sub group had since been working hard to ensure that the hall was retained by the community.
He said: “They have successfully applied to the Scottish Land Fund and completed the stage one process. A stage two application has recently been submitted and the outcome of that will be known in November.
“Go Golspie has been delighted at the level of support that it has received from the community with more than 100 people making pledges of support and over 400 followers of the Facebook page that was set up to keep the community informed of progress.”
Mr Gale added that Go Golspie had kept the Church of Scotland fully informed of its efforts to raise funds to make an offer on the building.
He revealed that a request to have the hall taken off the market until the outcome of the stage two application was known, had “sadly” been rejected.
Go Golspie learned about the closing date in an email from the church received late in the afternoon last Friday.
Mr Gale continued: “Go Golspie was surprised to see that a closing date had been set which effectively prevents them making an offer and could mean that the building will be lost to the community.
“Go Golspie has asked that the decision to set a closing date be reconsidered and postponed until November, and they are hopeful that they will get a positive response to that request.”
The Church of Scotland told the Northern Times: "The closing date was set to give all interested parties more than four weeks to submit an offer.
“Go Golspie has made a representation to extend the period for offers until a later date.
“Consideration is being given to that request and a decision will be made in due course, taking into account all the relevant parties’ views.”
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