Trying to build an innovative future is the big challenge
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Makar is the old Scots word for quality and excellence. We have a national poetry makar, Liz Lochhead, who was appointed after the death of Scotland’s first modern makar, Edwin Morgan.
The Highland makar is Neil Sutherland and his excellence involves the use of our native timber and the natural construction methods he has developed to suit Scottish conditions.
His projects, since the 1990s, stretch from Argyll to Sutherland and Stornoway to Brechin. They have yet to reach Caithness but that’s a matter of time and customer demand.
The real breakthrough for timber construction is to prefabricate sections off-site. Neil has championed local resources and the timber of the Highlands to achieve many notable individual homes and offices, as we saw all round the walls of his new timber-built factory. Just last week the halfway house on Royal Dornoch Golf Course, designed by Makar, was unveiled.
I should declare an interest at this point. Neil has designed and built an extension room on our house with timber walls and a grass roof. But we share strong beliefs in the success of Scotland’s rural future and a long friendship to try and achieve those aims.
Neil told the gathered crowd, led by enterprise minister Fergus Ewing MSP, that when others were heading for London from university, he and his wife Maggie, who runs the Natural Vegetable Company on their six acres, decided that they wanted to make a contribution to rural Scotland. They posed themselves the question – much as I did years before – what do we want Scotland to be like in 20 years?
Twenty years ago, building a timber house to look like a timber one with local materials would have been considered impossible. Many other things like a Scottish Parliament might have fallen into that category too. Building one house was an achievement: building a community of ecologically friendly homes and workplaces is the current challenge. Comparably, building a nation with the confidence to grasp the possibilities of its sustainable future is also a challenge for us all.
This got me thinking about planned villages. I thought of Halkirk and Ullapool a couple of centuries ago and think ahead to new places where the benefits of modern technology and local materials can make a new community. Such a one is in planning near Evanton where I stay. I believe once one is built, lots more will follow across the Highlands and beyond.
I also thought back to the brochs and stone forts of Celtic and Norse era. North of the Kyle of Sutherland with its oak woods, you find most brochs. Stone was the natural material there. But wood – whether Sitka spruce, Scots pine, larch or local hardwoods – are being grown further north today. Indeed, climate change may make that increasingly likely.
So, why not build more innovative timber buildings across the far north too?
APPROPRIATELY this week, I join in the welcome for the Scottish Natural Heritage action plan, “Climate Change and Nature in Scotland”, since climate change is one of the most serious threats we face today.
Scotland is a world leader in addressing its effects and by playing our part we can help meet this challenge.
Working with nature, we can develop cost-effective and long-term solutions to meet the demands and opportunities provided by climate change. I welcome the approach taken by SNH in its climate change action plan.
This always assumes that every Scot, whether town or country dweller, is ready to play a part. Whether it’s a tenant farmer or home owner, a council house family or a castle owner, we can and must play our part.
THAT’S another set of reasons why I also welcome the consultation on the Community Empowerment and Renewal Bill. This can make it easier for communities to take over public sector assets that are either not used or underused and help communities deal more effectively with vacant and derelict property in their areas.
We have seen issues with derelict properties in both Thurso and Wick in recent years. I hope these proposals will help us and others tackle a perennial problem. However, I’d say that taxes as well as penalties on empty properties have to be part of the plan.
Other items to tempt action are on the community right to buy public assets – sometimes called an urban right to buy. This could see communities take ownership of unused land or buildings in much the same way as community buy-outs have taken over parts of rural Scotland.
The proposals suggest communities get the power to challenge the delivery of services and allow people to have a say over how parts of local budgets are set – by choosing their own priorities. These fit well into my initiative, “Small Works”, which the Highland Council is beginning to address with the pilot scheme for area committees. But this proposed bill goes much further.
We must place a duty on local authorities to meet the needs and desire for allotments. We must also give residents of local authority housing a greater say over its management.
All these moves can bring more power to people and they go with the grain. SNP wants powers in Edinburgh over all our affairs, as most Scots agree when a list of the jobs of government are put to them.
We also want to ensure as many decisions are taken as locally as possible. My friends at Makar natural construction are about this.
And by voting to take control of the levers of economic power into the Scottish Parliament we can make ourselves responsible for our future if Scottish hands are on the well-fashioned local tiller.
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