Rural Community Gateway

Banchory High Street’s civic centre is buzzing with life. At the entrance youngsters chat about last night’s movie, mothers have gathered for their morning coffee and upstairs pensioners play cards.

Thus far this is just a vision. In reality, the 1872 built Town Hall, owned, maintained and operated by Aberdeenshire Council, is only used for physical exercise classes and occasional Saturday sales.

Director of Banchory and District Initiative Limited (BDI) Tony Brown said, "What we’d like to do is to turn it into something like a focal point in Banchory, for example a cinema or theatre, a place where people are proud to meet and have their functions."

A public meeting to discuss these plans led to the formation of a working group that met for the first time last November. "We are considering six options which range from renewal of the existing building to an extension over the car park to building a new one, and cost between £300,000 and £3m," said Mr Brown. If the project is viable, BDI also needs to decide whether it will take over the hall or establish a long-term lease with the council.

"Certain things affect the option we choose. There needs to be support from Aberdeenshire Council and the community for whatever options emerge, and there are issues such as the ability to raise capital funds, a viable business plan, and whether the community has enough energy to do it."

Finding funding poses major challenges as the screening study for the Big Lottery Fund’s Growing Community Assets scheme needs to be finished in July. Though limited, the SRDP’s new LEADER programme might have provided additional funding opportunities, but BDI is not eligible since Aberdeenshire Council does not classify Banchory as rural. BDI opposes this view and argues that Banchory services a rural area.

The Town Hall project was initiated after a Planning for Real Exercise in 2003. "Because the community council decided it didn’t have the sort of people to run projects it founded BDI Ltd, a company limited by guarantee, to follow up things emerging from the Planning for Real exercise," said Mr Brown.

And BDI has been busy. Among the other projects it is currently involved in are a feasibility study for the town’s swimming pool, the development of a tourism website (http://www.visitbanchory.com/) funded by eight local companies, and St Ternans Fair, a community organisations festival that this year will be expanded to two days.

To support these projects, BDI used to employ a development officer. Mr Brown said, "She was pulling things together, researching funding opportunities and handling general administration. We were unable to keep her because we could not get the funding. That is a real issue as we no longer have a public face for the organisation. That puts more and more work on the directors."

All sharing this problem, Aberdeenshire’s six rural partnerships believe they need roughly £40,000 a year to cover the costs of a full time development officer, offices and core administrative costs.

The relative affluence of many of Banchory’s residents has further hindered access to funding. Mr Brown said, "There is no reason for Banchory not getting its fair share of funding. Individuals may not be deprived, but that doesn’t say that the community is not deprived."

Though it has difficulties with accessing funding, BDI can rely upon inspired individuals who are willing to put in time and energy to push the Town Hall project forward. Mr Brown’s source of inspiration is Boat of Garten. Not only did that community’s 700 residents manage to put in 26 applications to fund their £1m new village hall, volunteers also committed 8000 hours during the first year of the five year project, the equivalent of four full time positions.

Petra Vergunst works as a freelance journalist in the field of rural development and aims to inspire, inform and support rural communities in Grampian through journalism, public talks, visioning and community-based research. She can be contacted at petravergunst@tiscali.co.uk

Related links

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Village Halls website
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