When the Rio Tinto Aluminium bid was made, albeit unsuccessfully, we were given every encouragement by the Scottish Government to continue to engage with the new owner GFG Alliance which, in return for Government support, had made a formal Undertaking to complete a land transaction with the East Lochaber Community Trust. Over the years, many attempts have been made to take this forward, which has proven extremely difficult as GFG Alliance appears to continually need to refinance. We believe that we still have the support of the Scottish Government in holding the GFG Alliance to the terms of the Undertaking

The vote on the special resolution closed on Friday 15th October and the 75% threshold was passed.  We will now press ahead with the new articles of association and the name change to the East Lochaber Community Trust. Once the change has been made we will be in touch with the Lochaber members regarding next steps.  In the meantime we wish our friends in Laggan well for the future. We thank members for their support to date.

We have today emailed members as follows:   Dear Member, VOTE ON THE SPECIAL RESOLUTION   As intimated by email in March and August, we must move to change our Articles of Association.   Following some consultation, members living in Laggan feel that their area should come out of the Trust.  This is a fundamental change affecting our name and certain clauses in the Articles that refer to Laggan.   Coupled with this, the Compliance Letter that we gained from the Scottish Government in 2016, confirming that our company Articles are compliant with the Land Reform Act 2016, has lapsed

With the Greensill difficulties, things now seem much more serious than the GFG Alliance scrutiny mentioned in our last communication a year ago. Following the acquisition by GFG in late 2016 we continued to be in touch with Jahama Highland Estates through their first chief executive and felt quite close to a proposal in late 2018. This had been worked up following discussion with Scottish Government officials since the GFG Undertaking required them to deliver on community land.  That proposal was withdrawn in early 2019, just before that CEO left Jahama. Over the past few months we have had a

Given that most people see some link between Brexit and expansion of production at the Smelter, it’s not surprising that in recent weeks we have had several enquiries about the likelihood of a land deal happening. It also has to be acknowledged that some queries have arisen following various press reports of scrutiny of the GFG Alliance.  While we make no comment on these we can reflect that that the original reason for setting up the Trust almost exactly four years ago was because of uncertainty – we believed that while the Smelter operations could continue owing to the water

Progress has been very slow over the past few months but we continue to pursue our aim of achieving a significant land transaction in favour of the community. We are still in communication with the Scottish Government and GFG Alliance; meetings are ongoing and we have the advice and support of Community Land Scotland. It is now exactly two years since Rio Tinto announced their review and the idea of a community option was first introduced as a possibility in the Lochaber News. I was quoted then as saying “there is a long way to go here” and that has