North-west Sutherland community transport scheme shelved due to lack of funding

A proposed community transport scheme aiming to provide vehicles for door-to-door journeys in north-west Sutherland has been shelved after it failed to meet its funding target.

Farr Goes community transport aimed to operate two electric vehicles to service the areas of Bettyhill and Melvich, enabling travel to social events or essential visits such as trips to Armadale surgery.

It also, crucially, aimed to assist with long journeys to appointments at Raigmore and Wick General.

But despite securing almost £100,000 in funding for the project, the Farr North Community Development Trust board have now taken the difficult decision to put the project on hold.

Project leaders had successfully raised all of the funding required to buy the cars but this funding was conditional on securing the resources to manage the project properly.

But without the funding needed to manage bookings and carry out regular safety checks, among other tasks, it was agreed that the project could not be completed.

Simon Lee, manager of Farr North, said: "After two years of hard, hard work - extensive research and consultations, and detailed business planning, this is extremely disappointing and especially for those who we know really struggle to get to hospital appointments.

"We have put a lot of resources into securing the funds, but ultimately, the applications failed. We have now had to redirect all of our resources to saving the shop in Bettyhill. Once that is sorted, we may be able to come back and look at this again."

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