I like many others who have contacted your web-site, have had an interesting experience trying to get a house on Arran.
I was brought up on Arran, although we left when I was 16, I came back when I met my partner 7 years ago (he was living in a van at the time - not nice in the winter...) Even then my partner & I realised that we would have to save for the deposit for a house, prices were creeping up but not too badly; we got that wrong. So I carried on working on the mainland & doing the weekend commute.
Finally after a lot of heartache & frustration on missing out on houses- (one being my childhood home, we had had our offer accepted then rejected as the owner soon realised they could get £70k more by waiting a little longer....) my mother gave us a plot of land in High Corrie - we were delighted! There is already an existing building on the land and we were told that we could extend this into a small 2 bedroom house.

Our architect, after some negotiation, called me to say we had been given verbal planning permission, the rest was simply a paperwork exercise. As you can imagine we were over the moon. We started making plans, got the mortgage in place etc. I had told my employer I was moving back to Arran full time & had started planning our new life back home on Arran.

In June last year, to our absolute horror, on the front page of The Banner, there was a article regarding planning permission being refused in High Corrie, this was how we found out that the planning dept. had decided to do a U-turn.  This was the first we had heard about it. It seems the Arran Civic Trust took great exception to us & did all they could to stop our plans. They succeeded. We tried to appeal & tried to speak to the gentleman in the planning dept. - no-one would listen & we were not allowed direct communication. It was awful. We decided to look at areas in Argyll, but it was not Arran.

Luckily for us, a retired couple had heard about our situation & made us an offer. Although we have had to really stretch ourselves financially - to a scary degree, we went for it. We now live happily but very poorly in High Corrie. Our mortgage payments takes up 55% of our monthly income.

The stupid thing is; every day I walk past my plot of land which is just lying there; we could have had a mortgage £85K less then we have now & had an eco-friendly, small house. Surely this cannot be right?

I am however acutely aware that at least we are lucky enough to be on the property ladder. Surely North Ayrshire Council has to review its planning rules? There seems to be a great deal of contradiction but no flexibility.  I know there are others in my position, why can we not review building plans on a sensible individual basis? I understand very much the need for control; there are quite a few buildings on Arran which are at best questionable; but other island communities seem to be having a great deal of success with low cost, eco-friendly & attractive housing.

Good Luck with the review & questionnaire - I hope a solution can be found.

Claire Berrie

In response to the editorial in The Arran Banner issue 1568 (2nd November 2006), I wrote a letter which was duly published - albeit somewhat abridged.
For those who do not read the Banner, here is the letter as printed - followed by the letter as written, for those who do...

Hi, thank you for producing the web site. I have had an idea buzzing in my mind for some time and maybe others will know how it might be achievable.
There are a lot of people who are very concerned about housing provision for ordinary folk. There are a lot of people with financial resources who might be willing to put up a % for a building project.
There are a few people who own land who might donate or sell for less than the going price. There are contractors on the island who might help provide materials/skills for free or at cost.
Could an Arran "charity/business" be set up to raise private investment to build say 4 small homes initially on "donated" land , to sell at an affordable price to locals but at a small profit. The profit to go into the fund and so the process would continue.... The original investors would need
to know their money would be refunded at some point. Rented accomodation could be included in the plans.
I hesitate suggesting a housing assoc. as they seem to have gotten bogged down with controls. Can we do it our way - what is best on Arran? It will take a few heads and a lot of time.
I'd be interested in hearing any positive feedback!

Kathy Sayer.

My name is Malcolm Ritchie. In 1995, I returned to live on Arran, where I had previously lived in the seventies, with my new wife and partner, Masako, to find somewhere to set up home. Initially, I was surprised how little the island had changed in the intervening years, only to later realize that there had actually been subtle and profound change.

Having returned from living in Japan on a shoestring, meant that we were not in a very financially robust position, so we were looking for a property to rent on a long-term basis. On our arrival, we were fortunate enough to be offered for rent, what had formerly been my old home in Merkland Wood, and had in the meantime become a much neglected and unvisited holiday home, for a period of three months. At the end of three months, my old neighbour, Danny McNicol introduced us to the owner of an old steading on the opposite side of Brodick Bay to Merkland, that at the time was also a holiday home. The owner, however, allowed locals to live rent-free in the property, provided they vacated it for two weeks in the summer – a very generous arrangement. We decided to pay a small rent, perversely, and lived happily there for four years, until the family decided they were going to use the house, sensibly, as a permanent home, setting us off once more, on a search for hearth-and-home.

   By now, the subtle and profound change alluded to above had become depressingly obvious ie. in the shadow of the demise of agriculture, and the new, brash consumer zeitgeist, the island had become a commodity, with its promotion and selling as a suburb of heaven, a bolt-hole away from the hell-hole of mainland mayhem, through television and the internet, and the change in mind-set that sees a house as investment and no longer simply a home. Long-term lettings had now become as rare as snakes’ eyebrows, and we were forced to move three times in four years – an increasingly less unusual experience for many – taking a variety of jobs to support ourselves. Finally we faced the reality of having to leave the island.

   At the eleventh hour, some old friends whom I had helped out of a jam many years previously, offered to buy a house in order to give us the security of a tenancy-for-life. In the vastly inflated market we found no property that we could, with any degree of conscience, offer for consideration, and were about to investigate Kintyre, when a farmer friend told us of a property he knew was becoming vacant, if we were interested. It turned out to be a semi-derelict steading, overlooking Kilbrannan Sound and Kintyre. I made an offer in a field, while a lamb was being extracted from a ewe, that was solemnized over a cup of tea and a dram, and sealed with a handshake (at least some  poetry still survives in life.) It is to the generosity of this family, who would rather know who their neighbours were going to be, than resort to the market of greed, that we are deeply indebted.

   We know how lucky we are, when so many of our friends, born and/or brought up on Arran (some, indeed, who were instrumental in finding us shelter), are forced to live in caravans, short-term lettings and winter-lets, and others who have had to move to the mainland.

   I used to think that in a democracy it would be difficult to legislate against the kind of acquisitive mind-set and housing market whose modus operandi is a form of legalized gazumping; fast turn-over buying-and-selling-for-profit; and disinterested absentee landlordism etc. Surely, it can’t be so difficult to put in place some form of legal safeguards to protect young islanders, workers, low earners, the integrity of rural communities, and so forth, when it was, ironically, so easy for government to crucially change the law on council housing.          

The last affordable house on Arran

(A long sorry tale )

I returned home to Arran after about 20 years living over in Scotland and various foreign climes.

Finding work on the island was no great problem, but it is well known, and almost expected, that you are never going to make much money (even at one point holding three jobs), but that is one of the compromises you make, living and working in rural Scotland.

Finding somewhere to stay however, was quite another matter. In the following 15 years I lived with parents (a bit sad in your 30’s), rented a room with/from friends, paid large rents for the privilege of keeping a “******* holiday-home” free from damp over the winter. Even built and lived in a wooden ‘chalet’ on someone else’s land. All the time trying to find somewhere permanent. It was once worked-out I had flitted 25 times in the space of 10 years!

Having eventually got enough together to cover the costs of buying a property, I spent years trying to find a house at a price that an Arran wage could handle (3 times bugger-all is not a lot!)

Eventually, as the likelihood of ever affording anywhere on my own island was receding fast, I had to compromise, and joined finances with someone else in the same situation, to buy a place together with the intention of extending and sub-dividing in the future to provide each of us with our own place.

After the usual waste of surveys and a gazumping toe-rag estate agent, the house we did find was “in a bit of a state” but was sound and the price was right, but we were up for fixing it up, and best of all, was bought directly from a local farmer. Had it hit the open market it would probably be just another  “*******   luuuvley wee cottage down on Earaan “!     

Since we got the place (nearly 7 years ago ) I don’t think there has been one equivalent property come on the market that we could even have thought of bidding on. - Sorry folks, but it was the “last affordable house on Arran “.

Nigel Walker