£547,000 COMMUNITY HALL FOR BARRA

The people of Barra are seeing the start of work on a project which should mean a major boost to community life on the island.

Demolition work is starting this week to clear the site for a £547,000 scheme to provide a new community hall for Castlebay following approval of £44,000 of support from Western Isles Enterprise.

The new building will replace former premises originally built as a church hall in the early 1960’s and taken over by the community eight years ago. Several thousand pounds were spent on maintaining and upgrading the old building but then it became clear that it would be cheaper in the long run to replace it completely.

The scheme has also won £350,000 in support from the Community Fund of the National Lottery; £100,000 from the Scottish Executive; and £50,000 from Comhairle nan Eilean Siar. The remainder has been raised by the local community.

The hall will provide a new focus for Castlebay, located on the Square at the centre of the township, and will have a main hall with a kitchen, servery, toilets and storage on one floor, and a second floor containing premises for a youth cafe, a meeting room, office and related facilities.

The facilities will enable the hall to play a major role in Island events like the week-long Feis, the Barra half-marathon, and other social functions. The hall will also provide a good venue for the fundraising events that organisations need to maintain themselves.

Provision of conference and meeting facilities will also be an important part of the hall’s activities  as well as providing a venue for social events like weddings.

The confidential meeting room would be used by the Land Court and the Children¹s Panel when needed as well as other organisations that require this kind of facility. Revenue from this wide range of activities will enable the hall to be maintained in the future.

The hall will be operated by the nine-member Castlebay Hall Retention Committee  it believes that because 70 per cent of the population of Barra lives within two miles of the hall, this will ensure that it fulfils a variety of social, recreational and fundraising needs for the whole community. For instance, a recent survey suggested that 95 per cent of the school pupils would use the proposed youth area.

Construction work on the project will be undertaken by Macinnes Brothers builders of Uachdar in Benbecula.

Mr Donald Macaulay, chief executive of Western Isles Enterprise, said that the enterprise company had recognised as part of its business plan that to achieve quality of life improvements on the Islands, it would be essential that the social and recreational infrastructure be improved.

“Part of WIE’s objective is develop community strengths, leadership and confidence. By making such a wide range of provision for the people of Barra, the new hall should enable those aims to be fulfilled more easily,” Mr Macaulay said.