Annual General Meeting

The Annual General Meeting of Kilmorack Community Council will be held on Thursday 3rd April 2025 at the Beauly Bowls Club commencing at 7.30pm

Agenda

Apologies for Absence

Minutes of AGM 4^th April 2024

Chairperson’s Report 2025

Treasurer’s Report 2024/25

Confirmation of Officers

Chair’s Report 2023-24

So another year has passed and Kilmorack Community Council has been very active during the last year, there have been elections to the Community Council which has seen some changes, the Vice Chair John Stewart stepped down at the elections after fifteen years of devoted service, he is missed along with his vast knowledge and expertise gained over this time, we are also glad to welcome two new members to the Community Council, Iain Stewart and Andy Fraser who are both settling in and getting used to the tasks the Community Councils undertakes.

The main focus of a lot of our time seems to be the ongoing works around the Wester Balblair substation, since last year SSEN have held a number of public consultations mainly regarding the newly proposed substation at Fanellan as well as details of new hydro substation sites at Aigas and Kilmorack.

SSEN’s preferred Aigas substation site has changed as a result of the Community Council alerting them that the proposed site has in the past flooded and therefore was deemed unsuitable and has been sited at a higher more suitable site, likewise the initial SSEN preferred site for the Kilmorack Hydro substation adjacent to the Kilmorack Cemetery we felt was unacceptable and disrespectful and this has now been moved further up the hill to a more acceptable site location.

We have expressed concerns to SSEN regarding the suitability of the roads to the proposed Kilmorack Hydro Substation site as we feel that they are not designed and made to take the heavy construction traffic to the site, the road at Altyre is also a single track road and we can envisage problems with construction traffic accessing the site and meeting residents travelling in the opposite direction.

Another concern that we have expressed to SSEN regarding this site is that they currently are proposing to transport large amounts of aggregate to level the site and we have ask that they undertake a ‘cut and fill’ exercise so that no aggregate need to be brought onto the site which will reduce construction traffic and the addition benefit of doing this would be to reduce overall height of the site and buildings so that they are less prominent visually.

The new Fanellan substation is not in Kilmorack but we will be affected by it construction and ongoing running should it be approved, it is required to connect the new overhead pylon line from Spittal, Loch Buidhe to Beauly and to take a new undergrounded HVDC power line from Lewis via Ullapool to Beauly, the site is 60 acres in size when complete but has a construction boundary of 868 acres, we have expressed concerns that the site needs to be this large and it does make us worry that this site will inevitably grow in size once it has been built and this maybe why they are asking for such a large construction site.

This will give you a small glimpse of some of the work the Community Council carry out on your behalf to limit the impact of these developments, all of these above-mentioned developments and related issues we will be raising with Highland Council when SSEN apply for planning permission.

Kilmorack Community Council together with Beauly, Kirkhill, Kiltarlity and Strathglass Community Councils have been attending Community Liaison Group meeting with SSEN to discuss network developments, our concerns and to try and get changes and mitigation measures. Unfortunately recently all Community Councils withdrew from these meetings as we dd not feel that we as communities were being listened to. The feedback from the majority of residents in all of these communities has been great concern and anger of what is currently being proposed by SSEN.

At a recent SSEN meeting at Phipps Hall I was asked by a resident regarding Community Benefit and what we the Community Council are doing about it. Community Benefit can be seen by many as an acceptance for a development and for this reason I think it is important that any benefit is not directly handled by the Community Council, we have therefore had a meeting with the Beauly Trust in collaborating with them to possibly form a Beauly & Kilmorack Trust to handle any future Community Benefit.

Again this year Teanassie School have contacted us asking whether we could support them with funding in connection with transport costs to and from swimming lessons for the pupils, we are pleased to say with the support of Highland Council and the Ward Discretionary Fund we have been able to support this again this year, something we feel is vitally important.

In addition to this Kilmorack Community Council together with support from Aigas Community Forest and Ffordes Photographic Ltd have also jointly funded the purchase pf equipment for a new Additional Needs Support room at the school which I believe will be up and running very shortly.

Something that we mention every year are the condition of the roads which seem to deteriorate year after year. We do actively communicate with Highland Council Roads Department with areas that we feel are particularly bad and need urgent attention, we do also realize though budget constraints which mean that some of these jobs are not done as quickly as we would like, having said this in recent weeks we have seen that some of these jobs have been undertaken, some pot holes filled and some ditches cleaned and thank Highland Council for this work.

We hope that at some stage when Highland Councils budget situation improves that there will be more preventative works undertaken with things such as ditch clearing being on a timetable, we feel that with global warming and possibly wetter winters in the future this work will be essential.

I would like to again thank each of the Community Council Members for their time and hard work, in particular I would like to mention John Graham our secretary who deserves a mention. He does a lot of work behind the scenes as a volunteer and without much recognition, without him we the Community Council could not do what we do, so thank you very much John.

If you have any concerns regarding the community or anything connected to it then please do contact us and let us know what they are and we can help if we can.

With regards

Steve Byford

Chair Kilmorack Community Council

Kilmorack Community Council Accounts 31th March 2024