Depopulation amid soaring house prices: the paradox of Scotland's 'Gold Coast'
Saving rural schools will take a determined approach to regulating the housing market
Some folk are calling it “the Gold Coast”, the sandy, occasionally palm-fringed shores of the northwest Highlands. It certainly lived up to the billing on a bright spring day last week when I headed over to Gairloch to meet parents from the Save Our Rural Schools campaign.
It is a paradox that this area has both a problem with depopulation and soaring house prices. Surely collapsing school rolls and falling numbers of inhabitants would imply that tumbleweed is blowing through the broken windows of abandoned homes?
But that is not the case. There was a croft - some acres with a basic dwelling - for sale in our area recently. Dozens of hopeful viewers came by Torridon stores to pick up the big metal key, including young couples for whom this was a dream of a place to start a family. It was on at “offers over £160,000” and in the blind auction, the top out of 11 bids was £300,000.
The wealth gap in a Scottish blind auction is the bit between valuation and price - a mortgage lender won’t fund that. So it was no surprise to see the older couple from London back, edging down the brae in a brand-new Range Rover. The successful buyers haven’t done anything wrong - they are in all probability perfectly nice people who will be welcomed by the community. They just have more money than most.
The ‘Gold Coast’ has an extraordinary number of second homes - more than half of all dwellings in some stretches. These are generally not holiday lets. Empty all year bar a weekend or two, Scotland’s electoral roll records zero inhabitants. These function for their owners as the property equivalent of a safe deposit box. In an uncertain world, keeping your wealth tied up in a stone-built cottage with a sea view in this quiet corner makes a lot of sense.
The other type of top-bidder for any available house is the active senior - folk aged between 55 and 75. Some of these might have moved to Spain - if not for Brexit. But now they look to the Highlands for a few years of hillwalking, wild swimming, golf and perhaps a bit of volunteering before senescence creeps in. When they get too old to drive, they sell up - and throw in the neoprene booties, the Pings and the volunteer fire service jackets for the next inhabitants.
The combination of these two demographics means fewer young families - and fewer genuine crofters. Housing is not the sole cause of the demographic imbalance of course - younger people need jobs too. But there is work, although often not well-paid and seasonal. Most settlements are crying out for workers in areas from bar work to zipline instruction.
A solution that is often proposed is erecting more affordable housing - some is indeed being built but it is very hard to find suitable sites. Anybody who tries to get permission to build hutches along the coast for the hoi polloi is likely to be bombarded with objections from the semi-retired barristers and so on that we laughingly call “locals”. Inland, swathes of the countryside - often covered in the remains of the homes of Highlanders turfed off in the Clearances - is owned by conservation charities who see their role as preserving “the wilderness”.
My own view is that we cannot leave the balance of different kinds of housing use to the market. It should not be up to individual buyers to fight it out - it is not their responsibility to consider the needs of the area. The ‘market’ is not a natural force but a human creation. It is not always right.
Highland Council could perhaps do more to bring affordable housing schemes to the front of the planning queue and to set aside petty complaints - but that would take political clout. They will need to work with the Scottish government to make a material difference. There has to be a stronger role for planning - perhaps requiring a change of use to make a place into a second home. If the authorities allow an unprecedented percentage of these, that has implications for the future of the community.
Save Our Rural Schools Campaign
That can be seen at Gairloch High School which has the capacity for 270 but only 89 students and falling fast. The SORS campaign represents Gairloch and three other High Schools in the area - Ullapool, Kinlochbervie and Farr. All are well under capacity and a further fall in rolls is baked in because the primary schools that feed them are currently shrinking - in some cases mothballed or suspended.
I chatted to Onie Tibitt and Seori Burnett of the SORS campaign in the Shieling Restaurant in Gairloch, slotting in between their meeting with a local political candidate and an interview with Two Lochs Radio. “We love this school, it is one of the reasons we moved here, a year and a half ago,” Onie said. She is concerned that, in trying to get coverage of the campaign, they sound too negative - they are very fortunate to be here and the education is largely good. But Highland Council’s funding formula, which removes resources for every lost pupil, risks killing the school - and the future of the community - to save a relatively small sum.
The school holds both the traditions of the past and the hope for the future. Students learn Gaelic, they play the clarsach and the small pipes. They do chores on their parents’ crofts. On day release in the senior years they shadow electricians and stalkers. They learn to look after horses. On weekends and in the summer months they work in cafes, hotels and shops, serving the tourists. Without the school, the community will tip into a sort of half-life.
It’s challenging in some ways to be a young person whose name is on a tumbling roll - it’s harder to play sports, there are fewer of your peers to hang out with. There can be a sense that you are part of a problem you can’t fix. It’s challenging to be a teacher or support staff in a school with a falling roll too - the dreaded funding formula means jobs and hours are increasingly under threat.
There are upsides - a calm, family atmosphere, small classes, a tailored education. Older students help tutor the younger arnd there is little of the aggro that apparently besets more urban environments. Students spend time outside in a beautiful area, they eat well - they are a healthy-looking bunch.
Seori’s three children went to Badcaul Primary - currently mothballed - and then to Ullapool High. “Ullapool itself is doing OK but the primaries in the areas around are struggling.” But Highland Council is cash-strapped and can’t see the big picture. “If we lose the schools then it is very hard to replace them. I think we need to see beyond the price per pupil.”
It did seem ironic that Highland Council announced it was closing or mothballing primaries in the same week that the Scottish Government published its depopulation strategy. The Scottish government’s strategy document does not set any targets in terms of population - and it mentions other rural areas like Japan and the north of Sweden. Japan is in the process of St Kilda-ing several islands - moving towards ending human habitation there. Sweden’s population in general has held up thanks to immigration - but not in the north, which is increasingly empty.
But the North West Highlands is a place that families do want to live and work. It is - in the scheme of things - not extremely far from urban centres. (Some residents even commute to London weekly via the sleeper services). House prices continue to rise - a three-bedroom “traditional stone cottage” on the seafront in Plockton is on the market for offers over £525,000, for example.
Saving the Highland’s rural schools, and with them the traditions and future of the communities they serve, will take joined-up thinking and a strong and determined approach to regulation of the housing market.
We all live in a bubble...
A sad story of a situation that will be hard to fix.