Mystery donor clinches 'right to buy'

THE champagne is still on ice but it won't be for very much longer.

Thanks to a mystery benefactor, around 450 families in one of the remotest corners of mainland Scotland are about to take control of a near £3m slice of the Highlands.

An environmental trust will this week announce a surprise £550,000 donation to allow residents in Assynt, north of Ullapool, to buy two sporting estates which have been owned by the wealthy Vestey family for the past 70 years.

The historic sale will be the first under the Scottish Executive's new land reform legislation aimed at giving communities the right to buy the land on which they live and work.

The donation will take the Assynt Foundation to within just £200,000 of the £2.9m price of the Drumrunie and Glencanisp sections of the much larger Assynt Estate. The Foundation is now confident that the rest of the money will be found before the June 3 deadline for raising the full sum.

The trust, based in England, is not willing to be named until agreements are signed later this week. But Alastair Macaskill, the bid spokesman, said: "We are really cooking on gas at the moment, and we are going to do it. We are now highly optimistic that we will get the necessary funds by the deadline.

"The trust has come forward with £550,000, and it is just a matter now of crossing the 't's and dotting the 'i's. Other bodies say they will chip in around £150,000.

"Three weeks ago we were short of £900,000 and we have raised £700,000 in three weeks, which is not bad for such a small community. We are very hopeful that some of the other funding bodies will now help us finally close the gap."

A second source close to the bid said: "It's looking very good now and the Foundation just about knows where all the money is coming from. That doesn't mean that fundraising will not go on until right up to the deadline."

The Vestey family, which made its fortune in the meat trade, particularly with the Fray Bentos brand, has owned the Assynt Estate in Sutherland and Wester Ross since the 1930s. It has been largely run as a sporting playground rich in game but short of people. The family will still own 60,000 acres in the area after the buyout.

The sale inventory includes three mountains - among them the iconic Suilven - a 14-bedroom lodge, numerous lochs and 1,853 deer. The community, based largely in and around the coastal village of Lochinver, intends to create more than 30 jobs by developing tourism, deer stalking and angling, expanding the woodland and starting educational projects.

They will base the regeneration on the successful takeover 12 years ago by 100 Assynt crofters of the nearby 21,000-acre North Assynt estate, paving the way, following devolution, for the Executive's land reform programme and the community right to buy.

There have been community buyouts before in places such as Knoydart, Eigg and Gigha, all with the help of government and Lottery funds. But the two estates now on the market are the first to be sold under land reform legislation passed by the Scottish Parliament last year. In previous buyouts, communities have had to raise the necessary funds by a closing date set by the seller and compete against other bidders.

This time, the legislation gave the Assynt Foundation six months to come up with the price set by an independent land valuer after it first registered an interest. If it did, it could not be outbid for the 44,000 acres of virtually unpopulated mountains, forest and lochs.

However, it also had to convince the Executive that the purchase was ecologically sound and in the long-term economic and social interests of the community. The community voted two-to-one to buy the land, a necessary majority, and deputy rural development minister Lewis Macdonald approved the bid in March.

Since then, the Scottish Land Fund, set up by the Executive, and with millions of pounds of Lottery money at its disposal, has pledged around £1.5m towards the purchase price. Highland and Islands Enterprise's Community Land Fund has also pledged £500,000.

One organisation that has been closely involved with the Assynt Foundation has been the John Muir Trust, the charity named after the famous Scots environmentalist, which owns several Highland conservation properties. It too is preparing to hand over a substantial donation towards the final cost of what it regards as a "national treasure".

Ian Proudler, the JMT's development manager, said the donation from the unnamed English trust would effectively close a gap which only three weeks ago was "quite considerable".

"The gap is not entirely closed, but it's getting so near that the pressure will be on the other funding bodies to bridge that gap. I think everyone would be pretty disappointed if that was not to happen when the community has worked so hard and done so well over the last six months. This is really just the final pieces in the jigsaw."

The JMT will this week launch a separate appeal to its members to contribute towards the future running costs of the two estates. "This land used to be part of a National Nature Reserve and we are confident that under the Foundation's management it can get this sort of accolade back again," Proudler added.