At the GCF meeting on 13 January 2021 it was reported that there had been very little progress on the lease, and that we had communicated to LSJT that we were “increasingly concerned that having now been unoccupied for 4.5 years the building is becoming increasingly dilapidated to the point where it may become uneconomic to refurbish as we had intended, which, of course, casts a shadow over the whole project.”
On 14 January 2021, LSJT proposed a revised version of their earlier “letter of intent” idea. A draft letter was provided by LSJT, which was discussed by the GCF trustees and reviewed by GCF’s lawyer.
The trustees again felt that the proposal incurred disproportionate risk for GCF, and that our time would be better spend drafting the text of the actual lease agreement. This view was affirmed, an expanded upon by GCF’s lawyer, who also pointed out, among other things, that a letter of intent would be insufficient security for grant applications.
The GCF trustees concluded that the proposal carried a level of risk that could not be mitigated by any amount of good faith, so it was decided to reject the proposal of a letter of intent on the basis of legal advice taken.
However, the on-going email dialogue with LSJT did suggest that a lease agreement was still a realistic possibility, so the GCF Trustees took the decision to speculatively apply for a building warrant to upgrade the existing septic tank to a modern sewage treatment plant.
The building warrant (21/00083/NDOM9) to replace the existing septic tank was lodged on 19 January 2021.
The motivation to apply early was that we could not progress SEPA approval of the installation until a building warrant was in progress, and because we could find no record of the existing septic tank having ever been registered (as it should have been under the Control of Pollution Act, 1974), we were concerned that this might delay permission, especially as we were proposing to discharge effluent into Loch Shiel which is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and Special Protection Area (SPA).
As it turned out SEPA were very helpful and more than happy to register the new installation, which they sensibly saw as a formalisation and significant betterment of the existing facility.
In the spirit of still trying to moving forward, GCF counter-proposed that they could ask GCF’s lawyer to prepare a draft lease agreement for LSJT’s consideration, since LSJT’s lawyer appeared to have made no tangible progress over several months.
At this point Mother Nature intervened.
In the last week of January, a near neighbour alerted us to the sound of rushing water coming from within the building. Sure enough the main pipe had ruptured, probably as a result of cold weather. The burst was repaired, but there was further water damage.
The silver lining was that this neatly demonstrated to LSJT that their asset was indeed deteriorating.
Within a week of the leak, we had made substantial progress. By 1 February 2021 we had the bones of an agreement.
The formal letter of agreement to this proposal from the directors of LSJT was delivered by email on 3 February 2021.
On 7 February 2021 GCF’s lawyer was formally instructed to prepare a lease with the following guidance,
The first draft of the lease was delivered to both parties on 25 February 2021.
Meanwhile there was one objection to the building warrant application for the sewage treatment plant upgrade. The adjacent landowner objected, on the basis that the proposal to site the new plant in the hole that would be left by decommissioning the existing 50+ year old septic tank, would place it less than 5m from the boundary with his land, in contravention of building regulations.
This was problematic for us because there is also a rule that sewage treatment facilities must be at least 5m away from the building they serve, and we had a distance of 7.54m between the building and the boundary.
We argued that;
Unfortunately these arguments did not persuade Building Control and so a compromise was proposed and agreed. The sewage treatment plant was positioned in a new hole, midway between the boundary and the building (3.5m from each), and encased in concrete on three sides, with the loch side left open so that any leakage would be directed towards the loch in the event of failure.
Building warrant for replacement of the existing septic tank was granted on 17 May 2021.
Because the building was constructed before 2000, we had a “duty to manage asbestos” under regulation 4 of the Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012, so we engaged the services of Asbestos Specialists UK Ltd, a UKAS accredited asbestos surveyor. The survey was carried out on 7 July 2021 and fortunately the building was given a clean bill of health.
On 16 July 2021, the lease agreement between LSJT and GCF was finally signed.
This gave us the green light to start the refurbishment process.
The building warrant (21/01358/NDOM6) for refurbishment of the building interior and exterior, and the addition of an external deck was registered on 28 July 2021.
Obviously, no construction work could be undertaken until the warrant was granted, but there were still a number of issues that could be tackled immediately.
Nobody knew who was paying for the electricity supply.
The building’s postal address still referred to “Marine Harvest McConnell Ltd”.
The property was in the Scotland Gazetteer as UPRN 130191285, but it was not recognised by Highland Council for either council tax or business rates. We later discovered that this was because, when it was built in 1992 (planning application LO-1988-614, building warrant LBA89/79), it had been classified as a “farm building”.
Even before a building warrant is granted, the rules permit preparatory work, so a village event was organized to strip out and prepare the building shell.
The “Bash and BBQ” was organized for 21 August 2021, the idea being to start to build engagement with the project by inviting villagers to help with the initial strip out and be rewarded by a complementary barbecue for their efforts.
In fact, the clearance work required was going to be more than could be achieved in one day, and it would have been unsafe to have too many people in the building while demolition was in progress, so a few village volunteers did the bulk of the basic demolition work in the evenings before the event.
This enabled the bigger army of helpers available on the day to tackle the few remaining demolition jobs and focus on clearing the enormous amount of debris to the skip. The task was still substantial, be the work was finished in time for the barbecue lunch on the day, leaving the hut stripped out and ready for refurbishment.
The GCF meeting on 8 September, 2021 was pivotal.
The trustees made three substantial decisions which significantly altered the trajectory of the refurbishment project.
Prior to this meeting the working assumption was that funding would be a challenge and so, to keep costs low, much of the refurbishment would have to be done by village volunteers. In particular we expected to defer the creation of an external deck for at least one year to spread the cost.
However, due to the surprisingly substantial revenues starting to accrue from the new community car park it was agreed that,
In the immortal words of the GCF chair, we decided to “go large”.
It was also agreed at this meeting to take up the suggestion that had been made by several villagers at the Bash and Barbecue event to increase the size of the proposed glass door facing the loch from 1.8m to 3m, to take fuller advantage of the view to the east. A sliding door was proposed because they are simpler, more reliable, more weatherproof and less expensive than bi-fold doors.
Even before this meeting, Building Control had been insisting on a Structural Engineers Report for the works. Given that we had intended to defer the deck design to a later phase, so that in practice the only structural issue was the specification of the lintel over the proposed new 1.8m door, we had hoped to persuade Building Control that an SER was unnecessary.
Now, given the decision to increase the door opening to 3.0m, and to include the deck immediately, an SER was essential and we agreed to engage the services of a Structural Engineer;
Euan Gray from the Fort William office of the firm Harley Haddow was engaged on 22nd October 2021 to provide structural engineering services up to the Building Warrant Stage with SER Certification.
Various deck design options were considered and we initially settled on a cantilevered design, but this was later revised to the as-built arrangement following constructive suggestions from the contractors.
One consequence of relocating the tank (to address the building warrant objection) is that it became necessary to remove two trees because their root systems would have made the tank installation very difficult. There was also a question mark over whether, given their proximity, the roots of the trees could damage the building foundations.
We consulted with Alistair Gibson and James Gillies in their capacities as forester and tree surgeon respectively and both were of the opinion that the trees, a sycamore and a beech, should be taken down, especially given their poor condition (the Beech has a split trunk) and precarious positions.
Fortunately the trees in question were both within the leasehold area and we obtained written consent for their removal from the landlords, Loch Shiel Jetties Trust.
Being on the shoreline of Loch Shiel, the trees were also in an area designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and Special Protection Area (SPA) so we sought and received written consent from Scottish National Heritage (NatureScot) for the removal of the two trees.
We checked that there are no tree preservation orders in force in the Glenfinnan area (the nearest is in Corpach), and we checked that the Scottish Government’s Control of Woodlands Removal policy does not apply, because the two trees constitute much less than 0.1ha of woodland (policy endnote ii), and the cleared ground is not being developed.
The trees were taken down by James Gillies and the wood from the felled trees was made available to villagers.
At the GCF meeting on 10 November 2021, based on early discussions with potential contractors, an initial “ball park” costing for the proposed work was presented.
Total estimated cost £117,500 + VAT.
It was agreed that an initial sum of £50,000 would be allocated to the project from GCF funds and that grant funding would be sought for as much of the remaining capital as possible, ideally the remaining £67,500. The challenge was to find funders that are willing to fund capital projects because at the time, around 80% of the active funds were for service delivery only.