MINUTES

MARCH MEETING OF TIREE COMMUNITY COUNCIL

7 pm 11 March 2026

Online meeting using Zoom and streamed on the Tiree Community Council Facebook page

1. Present: Gerard McGoogan (chair), Dr John Holliday, John MacCaskill, Frances Khetrat and Tim Arkless. Cllr Kirsty MacFarlane (Coll CC); Cllr Andrew Kain (Argyll and Bute Council: ABC).
2. Welcome: the meeting was recorded. Recordings are deleted after the minutes are approved. Due to the upcoming elections, this meeting needs to be non-party-political.
3. Apologies: Cllr Willie Hume.
4. Declarations of interest: GMG and JH declared an interest in item 12 due to their directorships of Solar.
5. Minutes of last meeting: these were approved without change as a true record. Proposed JMC, seconded TA.
6. Matters arising: GMG still aims to ask about the numbers of successful Tiree applicants for the Business Resilience Fund. Figures should be available in a couple of weeks. ABC has allocated an additional £20k to fund community councils. It is not yet clear how this sum will be divided up. A number of customers have got £400 compensation (and some up to £600) from their ISPs for the internet outage following Storm Amy. GMG has not yet contacted the Trust about the bike stands and the community garden. He will do this.
7. Correspondence: the Community Led Local Development fund for 2026-2027 is now open for expressions of interest. The fund will be open from 20 February to 2 April.
8. Meeting reports: it has been a busy month. GMG and JH met Olivia Brown, Settlement Project Officer for ABC. She will write a report for council with recommendations for increasing the population of the island. GMG, JH, Phyl Myers and Ann MacDonald met Laura MacDonald, Douglas Hendry and Jim Lynch regarding the upcoming Local Governance Review, examining how a devolution of power might work. JH and GMG met Jenni Minto, MSP; there were no major issues. GMG had met with the Western Isles Climate Hub. GMG had met with the Cross-Party Group on Islands and the Scottish Islands Federation. Since the elections are so close, there are fewer new developments to report on.
9. Transport updates: JMC has been chasing the CalMac Area Manager to find out what is happening on the Tiree run after 14 April. Making advance bookings is therefore very difficult. Stephen is coming to the next TCC (virtually) and Tiree Transport Forum (in person) meetings. He will also provide a briefing on the company’s new policy on the carriage of electric vehicles on the ferry. There is still no information on this summer’s planned in-port maintenance programme in Oban. The new MV Isle of Islay is starting berthing trials, including Tiree. This vessel has a deeper draught. Transport Scotland is holding an engagement meeting on Tiree this coming Monday. We hope for a good attendance. KMF pointed out that Tiree and Coll have a shared service, and the two islands need to continue to work together. The Tiree pier office/marshalling yard project is still out to tender, with no news of when it might start. This month has seen bad weather with many cancellations. KMF also pointed out the number of CalMac weather alerts. These can cause cancelled bookings in the hotels. The minutes of the meeting in January regarding the Oban air service are now out, and we will publish them. JMC stated that our engagement with Loganair has deteriorated. We are still waiting for agreement of banked flights for 2026, and the first event is in early May. The winter second Saturday flight was dropped from the schedule without notifying us. JMC will contact Loganair and Transport Scotland about this. We need confirmation that the scheme to put passengers up when flights are cancelled has been reinstated. There are conflicting signals about this. JH will write to Loganair. The Loganair CEO is visiting Tiree in April. KMF is going to write to Fiona Hyslop to ask for a meeting about the deck space pilot and to explore a possible ‘Samso’ system to give islanders preference in certain circumstances. JMC will also write to support this meeting. The Highlands and Islands Travel Scheme, designed to reimburse patients’ travel costs still has serious problems. JH met one patient recently. JH will look into this matter and approach the Health Board again.
10. Argyll and Bute Council budget, including Tiree Library: AK reported that this year’s ABC budget had protected services as much as possible. Next year’s budget will be tougher, unless the financial situation improves. LiveArgyll has been given an additional £150k by ABC. It has been reported in the press that Islay and Tiree Libraries have been saved, but possibly just for one year. Moving the Tiree library into the school depends on building work. ABC has also given the Tiree food bank (Solar) £6k.                 
11. Broadband and R100: Openreach and Tiree Broadband hope to set up a drop-in session in An Talla in the near future for those who are not yet connected.
12. Telephone boxes: three more islanders have expressed an interest in doing up phone boxes. TA has identified a company that buys old phone boxes. GMG will contact SSEN Transmission to enquire about their disconnection.              
13. Planning: there were no planning applications to consider this month.
14. Argyll and Bute Councillors’ reports: AK had already made all the points he wanted to make.
15. AOCB: there was concern about the cost of heating oil on Tiree. There have been recent price rises due to the war in the Middle East, creating national concern. We have made enquiries, and the cost of heating oil on Tiree has roughly doubled in the last fortnight. The Scottish Islands Federation surveyed island CCs today about this matter. The Tiree Trust has also been in contact with us. Fuel poverty is already a big issue on the island.
16. Date and format of next meeting: the next meeting will be virtual and on Wednesday 15 April, deferred a week because of the school holidays.

Dr John Holliday 13 March 2026