While the recent cold and wet weather might be good for the hydro bank account, we know it’s been a bit dreary. So, let’s bring some sunshine into your day with the latest updates from CNI!
What Makes CNI Go Round? Funding!
Last year, our island was fortunate to receive £160k from the Scottish Government, fueling various community projects and actions from the Community Climate Action Plan. This year, the pot has shrunk to £50k, but don’t worry—we have a chance to bid for a share of a larger £1m fund! All six islands can submit projects, which will be scored to determine which ones are successful. The deadline for submissions is August 31st, so we’re gearing up for a busy summer.
Safe Active Travel Path: A Safer Route to School
As the last financial year drew to a close, we earmarked part of our capital budget to create a safe, active travel path from the hall to School Park. With a blind corner, increasing heavy vehicle traffic, and summer tourists, the current terrain has become challenging, especially for those with prams, mobility issues, and children.
We’ve received permission from the Department of Agriculture, the landowner, to proceed with this path. However, we need to tread carefully due to the spread of knotweed. We’re committed to ensuring our construction efforts don’t contribute to the spread of an invasive plant, which would create more work for us in the future.
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Exciting Developments at 35 Inverarish Terrace
Although the CNI project isn’t directly involved with 35 Inverarish Terrace, we’re thrilled to keep you in the loop about this exciting development. After overcoming numerous hurdles related to outdated deeds and sewage systems, we’re happy to announce that the purchase is progressing. Raasay Development Trust (RDT) expects to own the property this month.
Once acquired, RDT will seek to purchase the land from the back garden from the Department to site an Air Source Heat Pump (ASHP). This move will allow us to begin bidding for the Rural and Islands Housing Fund and secure the necessary planning and building consents. Additionally, a stage 1 land fund application is in progress to acquire numbers 3 and 21 Inverarish Terrace, with plans to renovate these homes alongside 35, further boosting our community housing efforts.
Collective Retrofit Project: A Sustainable Future
Our collective retrofit project is expanding, now encompassing 41 homes! Since mid-May, Retrofit Assessors have been hard at work, conducting assessments to identify suitable measures for each property. These assessments are vital for accurately costing the project and determining how much funding we can secure through traditional routes like the Highland Council Area Based Scheme and ECO4 funding. We’re also exploring additional funding sources to fill any gaps and working with ‘able to pay’ households.
Rosie recently had the exciting opportunity to contribute to the latest issue of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland’s quarterly magazine. In her article, she delves into the Raasay project and explains why it’s so critically important. We’ll be sharing her insightful piece right here soon—stay tuned!
Spring and summer of 2025 are set to be retrofit-heavy seasons on Raasay. If you haven’t yet joined this initiative, we encourage you to get involved!
Reviving the Walled Garden Glasshouses
Great news from the walled garden! We’re making strides in restoring the glasshouses. Recently, SSEN visited to kickstart the process of installing an electricity connection. This connection is crucial for controlling temperatures in the glasshouses, extending the growing season, and boosting the garden’s produce output. Our next goal is to secure funding for the structures themselves, and we’re optimistic about the future of this project.
Eating Raasay
A list of local food producers has just been finished and published on the Raasay website, we will be sharing this around soon.
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The old meets the new at Raasay House
One of the most iconic symbols of Raasay, the community owned Raasay House has taken its first step towards reducing its carbon emissions. Currently, the building is heated by LPG boilers, installing a modern sustainable heating system such as a heat pump will massively reduce its emissions(by almost 4000tCo2e over 30 years) while delivering savings to those who run it.
The next steps will be to start sourcing funding while preparing to get more detailed designs of the new heating system.
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Some things are best left wet – Some positive wet news
Peatlands* also known as bogs, fens, marsh’s, or soggy feet land, make up the majority of the land cover on the island. And our carbon audits showed them as our single biggest carbon emitting source, deciphering exactly by how much they emit is tricky business. By one estimate they emit over 3x more emissions than all other island emissions combined(that’s all our energy, housing, transport etc!).
But why would they do this? A content peatland in good health will sequester carbon, using its wet and acidic nature to lock away decomposing plants(carbon). If something changes this environment, say for example, a drain is dug, the area will dry out, allowing the carbon to be released. Often the causes may be from actions long ago. Environmental conditions out of human control can then make it worse
Raasay is largely owned by the department of agriculture, with much of the land designated common grazings, stewarded and worked by the island’s crofters. While those entitled to the common grazings do not own the land, they do have the control on how the land is managed. Meaning that the island is fortunate to have people from the island largely deciding how the land is managed instead of someone far removed ‘who knows best’.
And while the department are keen to do peatland restoration of their holdings, no project would ever go ahead without the approval of the grazers. With that in mind, CNI helped organise a meeting between the North Raasay Sheepstock club, who manage the north grazings, and the Scottish Ministers, to talk about the restoration of select areas of peatlands.
We’re happy to say that the first steps have been agreed which will be a feasibility study, this will suggest restoration works. From here, the sheep stock club can make a decision whether or not they would like to proceed. While CNI is pursuing environmental goals, it’s our first and foremost priority to protect and support the community.
*Being a vast and complicated topic, a separate more in depth article will follow.
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Habitat Restoration – Invasive Species Mapping
Since the last update, much of the island has been mapped. Priority areas will be identified over the summer and a plan hashed out on how best to tackle them. Japanese knotweed is prevalent around the village, and although not spreading as prolifically as other species, is still a problem which we will hopefully grapple one day!
Winter Jobs
We hope to build up a local winter workforce capable of doing this removal work. Please keep in mind or get in touch if this would be of interest.
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Is there any sun out there?
For the Raasay Community Hall solar PV project has been waiting on the edge of its seat pending an assessment by SSEN, on whether or not it could connect to the grid. Vital for the project to export its excess energy. Just this week we have received the news there will be only a small cost to enable this connection, all being well, it wont be long till the hall is our first carbon neutral building!
So, despite the gloomy weather, there’s plenty of exciting progress happening in Raasay!
Carbon audits of crofts will be a requirement for the latter part of 2024/early 2025 so support with this exercise would be appreciated
Definitely! I believe the north sheep stock club have already done this working with the agricultural college. We’ll look into it and see what support CNI could potentially provide.
Great to se the great work continuing on Raasay!