This Community Action Plan is an opportunity to do something that has rarely been done before in Scotland – to grow a healthy, vibrant, growing rural community, leading change itself from the inside with significant resources of its own, and working with the public sector as an equal partner. 

That unique opportunity exists because of unrivalled access to resources. Significant community benefit funds from local windfarms - literally millions of pounds a year - coupled with commitment, energy and ever-increasing capacity, means that the local community has the ability to invest in a way that the public sector might have done 50 years ago, and few other communities in Scotland can match. 

Foyers and Stratherrick are ideally placed to implement sustainable, contemporary solutions to the challenges that this rural Scotland faces: good jobs, affordable homes, rural poverty, climate change, an ageing population, access to services and facilities, and – perhaps hardest to define, but very real for this community – enhancing the rural environment and way of life in the face of encroaching urbanism. 

The beauty of the community-led response in a plan like this is that it is positive and proactive.  It doesn't simply identify problems and lobby others to fix them. Instead, the plan focusses on aspirations and how they can be realised  through community-led action - all developed through solid community engagement.

As those of you who were involved will know, the Community Action Plan was underpinned by a community survey which generated massively valuable  ideas and aspirations as the foundation for the plan.  Online engagement featured massively in preparing the plan, because of COVID - so we developed an online Ideas Bank, held online Community Assemblies,  online working groups, and online consultation on the draft plan.  Check out the story of the engagement including a short video, and browse back through the news posts for more detail.

The plan includes ambitious but practical actions: building homes for people who need them most, creating local childcare so parents can get back to work, improving countryside access so locals and visitors can enjoy the hills, heritage and lochs, and much more besides - a total of 20 action areas.  The plan on a poster (below) has a summary of the action areas.   

In the full plan, each action area has detailed information sheets with first steps, examples and more.  The idea is that anybody can pick up a project and get it going.

Lots of communities prepare community action plans like this. Too often, the process is energising for those involved, but little changes on the ground. Stratherrick and Foyers will be different, because the community has access to resources to make things happen.

That work is proceeding rapidly as the Community Trust followed up the plan by rapidly putting in place capacity and mechanisms to empower local groups to deliver projects with funding and professional support.  Even delivering half of this plan over the next five years will be transformational for the local community and inspirational for the rest of Scotland.

The good people of Stratherrick and Foyers have resources, commitment and ever-increasing support. Now we have a plan of action too!

Follow these links for more information:

Huge thanks to the many local folk in Foyers and Stratherrick who contributed to the plan, and to Nick Wright Planning, Icecream Architecture and SCDC (Scottish Community Development Centre) for facilitation and support.