MINISTER FOR HOUSING PAUL MCLENNAN VISITS FINDHORN ECOVILLAGE AFFORDABLE HOMES and identifies a possible model for rural Scotland
On Monday 26th August, Paul McLennan, the Scottish Minister for Housing, accompanied by his team and
Fiona Geddes, Moray Council’s Housing Strategy and Development Manager, came to visit the Park to see
the benefit that the Scottish Government’s Rural Housing Fund has brought within our settlement.
It was a great honour for the Park Ecovillage Trust to showcase our affordable homes to the Housing Minister,
and to outline how key the Rural Housing Fund has been, alongside the collaboration with Ekopia, Duneland
and private investors, in delivering these Eco Build affordable homes. The buildings also benefit from
communal heating systems that help hold back the crunch from the ever more expensive energy market.
Tenants opened their homes and answered questions about their quality of life as residents.
Paul McLennan and his team were then invited to visit the North Whins site to see what the latest round of
Rural Housing Funds will help realise: the first set of Park affordable homes that will be sold to private
ownership within the Duneridge development. GLDB and Duneland were excited to present all of what makes
Duneridge a unique proposition, from how it is tied together by a Co-Housing Co-Operative to how its three
very distinct district heating systems were developed with the aid of Strathclyde University participation, thanks
to research funding provided by the Just Transition Fund (JTF).
The overall sense from the visit is that this northern Ecovillage continues to deliver on innovation, with the
Minister requesting a case study of Duneridge in particular, with a view to researching the possibility of
delivering these types of development in other rural settings across Scotland.
Arianne Burgess MSP had invited Mr McLennan to visit the Park during the Parliament’s summer recess, but
unfortunately could not attend. Alex Walker, founder of Ekopia coordinated bringing together a "meet and
greet" team of all the Park organisations that have collaborated over the years to deliver on affordable
housing. Those present were Alessandro Daboni of Park Ecovillage Trust (PET), Fasil Bogale from Ekopia
Social Investment Enterprise, Eian Smith of Duneland Limited, and Green Leaf Design & Build (GLDB)’s
Jason Caddy.
