Minute of Meeting of Board of Directors of Point and Sandwick Trust held in the PST Office on Tuesday 21 November 2017 at 4.00pm.

PRESENT: Angus McCormack (Chair) Duncan Mackay Liz Chaplin Agnes Munro Eddie Macgregor Matt Bruce Sonja Macleod Norman Mackenzie Donald John MacSween Calum Macdonald John Moffat (Man Judd)

APOLOGIES Dan Maclennan Andrew Mackenzie Alison Carty Kenny Dan Macdonald

1 WELCOME

The Chairman welcomed all those present to the meeting.

2 DECLARATION OF INTEREST

There were none declared at this point although the Chairman indicated that declarations could be made at any time during the meeting.

3 MINUTES

(a) The Minute of Meeting of 12 September 2017 was approved. (b) The Minute of Meeting of the Grants Sub-Committee of 20 November 2017 was approved.

4 MATTERS ARISING

There were no matters arising.

5 GENERAL MANAGER’S REPORT

(a) Finance

The balance in the Trust Current Account is £107,767.32 at 20th November, 2017.

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All the grant payments approved by the Grants Sub Committee on 20th November 2017, amounting to circa £18,500, are to be deducted from this balance, and no other invoices are outstanding.

Board members will be kept informed of PST finance at Board meetings.

The draft budget for 2017/18 was approved.

This was agreed.

(b) Grants Awarded The Grants Sub-Committee Minute of 20 November 2017 was circulated separately and approved.

A table showing all grants paid from November 2016 to November 2017was circulated to the Board and noted.

(c) Development Consultants Progress Report Tony Robson and Alasdair Nicholson provided details of their part-time development support to PST’s recent away day. This outlined potential projects which the Trust has prioritised in its development strategy, and to respond to emerging demands through advice on funding and other matters and the referral process which has seen around 20 local organisations receive support and the establishment of a number of new organisations in the area. The type of support at initial stages includes:-

 Site visits to potential projects  Formal meetings with community groups  Investigation of funding from external agencies  Tendering of advice to groups  Preparation of new company constitutions  Funding applications to Big Lottery for some feasibility work.  Early discussion on other potential development possibilities.

Funding attracted in has included Awards for All grant to enable the feasibility study for the Coastal Walk for Point and Sandwick to be finalised, match funding for slipway and initial work in facilitating Upper Community Trust obtain Land Fund support in relation to the purchase of a croft in Upper Bayble.

A LEADER application has been lodged for phase one of the coastal path to include Iolaire loop and the area past Eaglais na H Aoidhe. Planning permissions for those works are being sought through the respective community councils. Significantly, the Trust have agreed in principle to the Ceum air Cheum paper as have Stornoway Pier and Harbour Commission. The case for the coastal path has also been circulated to community planning partners and CNES. A meeting has been arranged with CNES to discuss progress. As landlord agreement for the Iolaire loop has not progressed as quickly, the LEADER bid is on hold until February 2018 as amendments will be required. Preparation will take place for two other phases to have some degree of flexibility and be in a position to respond to funding opportunities or changes.

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Discussions have taken place with Portnaguran Amenity Committee, Tiumpanhead Community Association and Plasterfield Recreation Association regarding feasibility applications for larger project developments in those three areas. A site visit to Plasterfield with the association was made since initial discussion took place.

Another group, Roots for Low Impact Living, which received advice and an interim steering constitution is considering its options for going forward.

Upper Bayble Community Trust CiC are in the meantime preparing to amend their constitution and were given some further advice they sought.

Positive publicity was generated for PST and Point Football Club in the Summer through a donation of surplus football strips to two youth teams in Tanzania. Recently Alasdair Nicholson was a guest tutor for development students at UHI which included case studies examples of Buth An Rudha, Beinn Ghrideag wind farm and PST.

The Consultants’ report was noted.

(d) Croft Woodlands Project A progress report from the Croft Woodlands Officer will be given at the AGM.

(e) LED Community Report A progress report from TIG will be given at the AGM.

(f) Marketing, Social Media, and Promotion A report from Jo Dunn with proposals to promote PST was circulated to Board members recommending various actions to raise the profile of PST including the production of a regular newsletter which would be circulated to Board members and community members.

It was agreed to approved that Jo Dunn be contracted to undertake work on the production of a regular newsletter as well as raising the profile of PST on its website and through social media.

(g) Timetable of Meetings The following is proposed as the timetable of meetings for 2018.

2018

DATE PSP PSTPST Tue Tuesday 6 February 12.312.30pm 5.30 5.30pm Tuiii Tuesday 20 March 12.312.30pm 5.30 5.30pm Tue Tuesday 8 May 12.112.30pm 5.30 5.30 pm Tue Tuesday 26 June 12.312.30pm 5.30 5.30pm Tuesday 11 September 12.312.30pm 5.30 5.30pm Tuesday 20 November 12.312.30pm 5.30 4.00 pm – Board 7.30 7.30 pm - AGM

It was agreed to approve the timetable of meetings for 2018.

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(h) Away Day At the recent away day in Horgabost on 25 October, the following points were listed for action: ..

 DJ -Monthly budget updates for Board  DJ -Amend salaries in Budget to show annual increase- RPI+CPI divided by two  DJ -Importance of maintaining surplus equal to nine months operating costs  DJ -Look into possibility of opening interest accruing account with John Moffat and Bank  DJ -Match funding for projects shown in budget column  DJ -Meeting with Dan and Amy to discuss more money for LED project.  DJ -Annual Report to AGM to contain details of grant recipients  DJ -Item on next agenda re Andrew’s paper  CM-Pursue with SSE a reduction in scheduled outages.  Dan- Erect notice boards in shops and community centres.  DJ- pursue idea of members’ newsletter containing promotion and grant info.

This was noted.

(i) Election of Office Bearers 2017 The undernoted table shows the current position with the election of office-bearers and Board membership.

1 Angus McCormack (Chair) Sandwick Community Council 2 Duncan Mackay (Vice-Chair) Appointed at AGM 2015 3 Eddie MacGregor Point Community Council 4 Alison Carty Sandwick Grazings Committee (2015) 5 Dan Maclennan Sandwick Grazings Committee (2016) 6 Liz Chaplin, AGM 2016 7 Matt Bruce, Garrabost AGM 2013 8 Agnes Munro, AGM 2014 9 Kenny Dan Macdonald, Aird AGM 2014 10 Andrew Mackenzie, Aird AGM 2014 11 Jenny Pain, AGM 2015 – RESIGNED 2017 12 Donald C Taylor, AGM 2015 – RESIGNED 2017 13 Sonja Macleod, Portvoller AGM 2015 – RESIGNED 2017 14 Norman Mackenzie, Portnaguran AGM 2016

It was agreed to re-nominate Matt Bruce, Garrabost on to Point and Sandwick Trust Board.

The following new nominations were agreed:

 Rhoda Mackenzie, Sandwick  Sonja Macleod, Portvoller  Gordon Mackay, Knock.

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6 ANNUAL ACCOUNTS

John Moffat took the members of the Board through the Annual Accounts which had been circulated. An opportunity was afforded to members to ask questions on the Accounts.

It was agreed to approve the Annual Accounts.

7 BEINN GHRIDEAG UPDATE REPORT

Calum Macdonald submitted the following update report for Beinn Ghrideag.

(1) Output Update The output in September was 1,6966 hours and October 2,692 which is 6,084 combined which was 11% below our P50 expectation. The wind was lower than P50 in October but the real problem was the scheduled outage at the start of that month. Ian Irvine has pointed out that the typical scheduled grid maintenance outage for mainland farms is 1 day whereas Lewis wind farms are suffering around 25 days each year. I raised this at the quarterly meeting between island wind farms and SSE organized by CES on 5th October but the SSE reps said they could not comment on other wind farms except to say that every wind farm is different. This is obviously something to be pursued further but I do not intend to take it up immediately as I am currently trying to get the same reps to give the four townships a grid connection offer.

(2) Income Update The slump in October means that we may undershoot the P50 by 100-200k but if we have a good November in terms of output and price, we could claw some of that back.

(3) Compensation Claims The National Grid have finally accepted our claim for compensation for gird constraint in 2015-16. I calculated £128,000 and they have accepted £124,000. The difference is caused simply by averaging the figures over a whole year as I did, or doing monthly calculations as they preferred. I will now submit the claim for 2016/17. This first year’s claim was larger because the effect of the 7MW cap at the start was greater than the ongoing impact of the Connect+ system but it should still be worth circa £60k a year now that the principle is established.

(4) Enercon Variation Costs Claim Enercon have finally revived their final variation claim. I met with them in Edinburgh on 20 November 2017 and explained that we did not agree that importing the back fill over the bases was a claimable variation as it was always clear that the rock won on site would have been unsuitable for the purpose. They are now deciding whether it is worth going to arbitration on.

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(5) Rates No update to report.

(6) Other Community Wind Farm Projects.

The Government has confirmed that islands wind farm will be eligible to compete in the next CfD round in 2019 but there are no details other than that.

I met with Donald Cameron MSP at Holyrood on 24th October 2017, accompanied by Mark Stewart of Johnston Carmichael. Cameron is opposition spokesman on energy and general policy advisor to Ruth Davidson. He is supportive of island wind farms and he lobbied the UK Dept of Energy on CfD inclusion. However, he was at pains to point out that the announcement did not guarantee success as the CfD auction was highly competitive with the offshore wind farms driving down strike prices remarkably.

He was sympathetic to the community case and he wanted to be kept in touch. Meanwhile, the Land Court have responded to the objection received to the EDF Section 19 application. They are currently considering whether to agree to our request to sist the application until the 50B application to the Crofters Commission has been decided.

The Commission have also responded by accepting that 3 of the township applications are in order and ready to be decided. However, they are deciding whether to defer their decision until after the Section 19A has been decided (!). The townships are replying to say that they believe the 50B to be decided first.

(7) Hydrogen Ship On Friday (17 November) I received confirmation from the Scottish Government that they were willing to fund our feasibility study for a hydrogen powered ferry under the LCITP fund. We will lead the study and our two partners are CMAL and Ferguson’s shipyard. We will need to tender in the next fortnight or so for other suppliers who we will need to help us complete the study, such as SIEMENS etc.

(8) Wood Group Wood completed their purchase of Amec Foster Wheeler last month. This has led to complications for us in that they have inherited 50% ownership of the Stornoway Wind Farm and that has given EDF a veto over any work Wood do for any other wind farms on Lewis, including, of course, the four townships. This means that Wood can no longer work on these four planning applications and so I have contacted Aquaterra (based in Orkney) and asked them to take over and to take the applications to completion.

Wood say that they will be able to carry on working on the BG operational contract and they would like to continue to be part of the hydrogen ship project, but it obviously raises a question for us about whether we wish to be in any relationship with Wood when EDF can exercise a veto over it at any time. I have been in discussion with Steve and Ian about our options and this probably merits a discussion at the Board.

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(8) Financial Model and Dividend The next dividend calculation is in December and I am hopeful that this will be completed and the dividend paid out before Xmas. Going forward, I will continue to monitor the wind output and power price we achieve each month. If our performance falls consistently below the P50 level I will report it to the Board so that we can consider whether or not we need to make any reductions in our operating budget to compensate.

(9) Re-Financing

Still no reply from Santander so I will need to write to them again.

The Report was agreed and noted.

The Chairman thanked Calum Macdonald for all his hard work and in particular the Hydrogen Ship development which was a great achievement.

10 APPOINTMENT OF FUTURE PROJECTS COMMITTEE

With reference to a discussion which took place at the Board’s Away Day in Horgabost it was agreed to form a small group of members to look into the possibility of involvement in future community projects in addition to those being worked on at present.

It was agreed –

(1) to appoint the following members to the Future Projects Committee;

Andrew Mackenzie, Chairman Norman Mackenzie Sonja Macleod.

(2) that this group would report back to the Board in six months’ time.

11 ANY OTHER BUSINESS

There was no other business.

12 DATE OF NEXT SCHEDULED MEETING

Tuesday 6 February 2018.

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