One of the more quirky elements of Scotland is that some places have assets which together comprise something called the “Common Good” and there’s a lot of talk about this in Nairn. This is for good reason too as Nairn has one of the largest Common Good portfolios in Highland and it includes some of the town’s finest assets and green spaces such as the Links, the harbour and the Maggot area as well as the Riverside, Viewfield and Sandown lands along with historic buildings such as Viewfield House.
Nairn River Community Council (NRCC) published an excellent article about the Common Good fairly recently so if you want to know more then take a read of that, and if you want to see a copy of the Common Good Register that’s available online.
Over the centuries since the concept of Common Good first came into existence many of them have been systematically asset stripped by previous generations and here in Nairn even in more recent times some very “strange”, to put it politely, decisions have been made which wouldn’t go down well if they’d have been made public at the time.
Be that as it may we are where we are and currently Highland Council are trustees of the Nairn Common Good and our four Nairn & Cawdor councillors are delegated by the council with responsibility to oversee its management … and that’s where the problems have arisen in recent times.
You can see this with the parking ticket machines erected by Highland Council on the Links car park … except that Highland Council don’t own that car park, the Common Good does.
You can see it especially with the land at Sandown on both sides of the A96 on the western edge of Nairn. That’s owned by the Common Good and is currently rented as agricultural land except for a strip on the northern edge which is allotments. Highland Council have zoned the land for development in the Inner Moray Firth Development Plan but this is an “inalienable” asset which means that before it can be sold to a developer the council must consult with the community.
That NRCC article I linked to above explains the sorry tale of what happened when they did consult with the people of Nairn, and then consulted them again when they didn’t get the answer they were looking for.
That saga still continues so if I’m lucky enough to be elected as a councillor for Nairn & Cawdor then this is one of the many issues I’m going to have to wrestle with and I hope I can do the best for all the people of Nairn.