As part of our island of the month interview series we spoke with Luke Fraser from North Ronaldsay Trust. Lying further north than the southern tip of Norway, North Ronaldsay is the most northern island within the archipelago of Orkney. With an area of 690 hectares, it is known for its historic lighthouse, migratory bird life and unusual breed of sheep.
JH: Do you live on North Ronaldsay or Mainland?
LF: I live on mainland Orkney but generally go out to North Ronaldsay once or twice a month. It’s always been my favourite of the Isles and I have a great relationship with the community there and have been working with them for a number of years in previous roles. When the Community Development Manager role within the Trust came up I thought it would be a really good fit for my skillset.
JH: Have you always lived in Orkney?
LF: Mostly. I had two years abroad doing voluntary stuff, four years in England for University and some internship work and then have been back in Orkney since 2005. It’s a brilliant place to bring kids up and it’s good to now be able to feedback into community development. I’m really keen on the resilience side of sustainability of the islands and communities and the community development work is a great opportunity to develop that.
I’m all for doing net zero, but not just for the sake of net zero. I think we need to focus on developing community sustainability and resilience in a net zero way. That’s how you sustain a community and help meet net zero targets. Focusing on net zero as the primary goal will probably just make island communities less sustainable and resilient. What’s the point in that?
JH: What’s the transport connection between North Ronaldsay and the rest of Orkney?
LF: Ferries are weekly in winter and twice weekly in summer. This year the weather has been a bit of an issue and the ferries are struggling to get in some weeks. You could have a fourth ferry and it would still be going backwards and forwards plenty, however it’s obviously not affordable to do so. If the ferries are cancelled, Orkney Ferries try and put another one on or they will put a freight plane instead. They really do what they can to enhance that connection.
For most islands, the lifeline service is a ferry but for North Ronaldsay and Papa Westray it’s the plane. It’s a 15 minute flight from Kirkwall to North Ronaldsay, not a long trip by any stretch but it is difficult because a lot of the other islands have got the ferry connection with 100 plus passengers. We’ve only got three flights of eight people there and back in a day.
Loganair does its best. Orkney Ferries do their best. But with old ferries, the need for another plane and budget constraints it’s going to get harder and harder with more competition for what are increasingly limited funds and services.
JH: What’s the main projects you’re working on currently in North Ronaldsay
LF: We’ve got about four main projects at the moment. The big one is “The Pund” project, our £2 million community hub scheme, redeveloping a property at Trebb. Plans include a Gym and a Wellbeing Centre alongside a meeting room, hot desks, kitchen space, a new-build Wool Mill and new-build Meat Larder. We also have plans for a two-bedroom flat included within the complex and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service are using the garage as their new fire station. We’re also looking at putting petrol and diesel pumps and more renewables in – a 6 kilowatt turbine,14 kilowatts of solar and a 10 or a 20 kilowatt battery. We’re also going to have garaging for our community transport as we’ve just bought an 8 seater EV minibus and we’ll have EV chargers and electric bike charging, all coming off that renewable generation. We had a two day power cut in North Ronaldsay last week.
Scottish and Southern Energy Networks were trying to find out where they could get people to as so many houses are running on electricity; your heating’s electric, cooking’s electric, everything’s electric. That’s the resilience side that needs addressing, and that ability to try and support households. And so we’re looking at potentially using Trebb for that. We are thinking of installing a wood burner in the corner of the wellbeing space, so there’s some heat in there and we’ll use a gas range in the kitchen.
If we’ve got a 10/20 kw battery and we’ve got on-site generation, it’s having that conversation with SSEN about keeping enough generation on the island. When we’re installing this new stuff at Trebb, the question is, can we put some engineering in so that in a power cut scenario we can flick a switch and just go to the renewables? Keep the lights on, keep the heat on, charge EVs for food deliveries, or even just dump it into heaters if there’s more generation than we need.
We also have the lighthouse with four turbines where we could potentially do something similar.
This way we are actually building resilience in to key community spaces.
JH: Are you finding it a challenge getting the contractors up to do this work?
LF: Yeah, it’s tricky. We have a good relationship with a number of contractors here but it’s fitting projects into their timetable. Whilst still carrying out the proper procurement we also make sure to approach the contractors and notify them we have work coming up. If there’s enough work on the mainland they’ll stay there but if you can let them know there’s a pipeline of projects going on in North Ronaldsay. We’ve got a brilliant contractor for the Trebb also working on the New Kirk project – the £300,000 refurb of our New Kirk (which despite its name is very old). This involves re-harling the outside, insulating the inside and a new heating system.
We’ve also got some housing stuff and the lighthouse complex will be partially redeveloped when the Pund project is completed and the wool mill moves into the new build, its original space will become available for future development. We’ve got a pipeline of projects with the aim to get funding for a chunk of them.
On another note, it is tricky getting heating engineers out for heat pumps and that side of stuff. When heat pumps work, they’re brilliant. However when they break, they’re very expensive to replace and I don’t think government and others have clocked on to that yet. You get grant funding to put one in, but you don’t get grant funding to repair or replace it eight years later when the first one breaks. In the Isles you’re probably better looking at improving insulation, solar PV, and just direct electric heating like high heat retention storage heaters. If a single heater fails, you still have the others and can replace the broken one. If a heat pump fails you lose your heating, hot water and sometimes ventilation. It may well also be weeks, if not longer, before you can get someone to fix it.
JH: How do you find the funding process for these projects?
LF: The funding side of stuff’s been great and we’ve got some really good relationships with funders. We’ve got funding from the Community Ownership Fund from the UK Government’s as well as a few of Orkney Islands Councils funds, the Regeneration Capital Grant Fund, Islands Communities Fund, Rural and Islands Housing Fund, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and Sports Scotland. As it’s a hub project it gets funders interested even if they are just funding one element. Sports Scotland for example are providing funding for the gym element of the project because it’s in a really remote place, something quite unique, and when that specific funding is matched in with the more general funding aimed at the ‘hub’ concept it all works really well together. We’ve been very lucky with timings as well. I think it would be much harder if we were to start the project now.
So it’s almost that an analysis of what is needed on the island, and how can we potentially deliver that in one or two buildings. Asset mapping is a key step now and a number of islands in Orkney have done a really good job of it.
JH: And did you say you’ve also potentially got a housing project as well?
LF: Yes, we have a couple of options on the housing side. We’ve got a two-bed flat within the Trebb project already and in 2019 the Trust renovated the three-bedroom former Schoolhouse. We’ve got the Lighthouse Complex up at the north end of the island and we’ll probably start looking at the feasibility of what do we do with the space once the Wool Mill’s been moved out. The question is how do we utilise that space in a way that’s going to benefit the community most?
Then there’s potential for additional housing projects as well. We are looking into a few possible next steps, including the potential for modular housing at the Trebb site.
When I was in the council I set the Empty Homes project up and we got funding for an Empty Homes Officer and empty homes are a real opportunity in the isles as there are some which will be easier and cheaper to redevelop than a new build.. Funding is the key due to the cost to build. It’s so expensive to build new and it’s not that cheap for retrofit properties either. Especially when you’re an island like North Ronaldsay that doesn’t have the turbine income that some other islands have. We can’t fund a £100,000 gap in a project, we have to pull in almost all of the required funding. Luckily, with the Pund project, we’ve hit the right time and the funders have been brilliant. We’ve managed to make that work this time around, but it’s a tricky thing to do. The Rural and Islands Housing Fund and Orkney Islands Council have been really good and housing projects in the isles wouldn’t be possible without that support.
JH:Do you have a problem with people having second homes there? Or is it touristy?
LF: We get quite a few tourists on North Ronaldsay which is great. We have a really good Bird Observatory, as well as the Lighthouse, unique seaweed-eating sheep, lots of migrating birds, a really unique setting and some amazing community festivals and activities throughout the year. The issue is getting all the people who want to come on and off the island. We do have some second homes, but not that many and it’s definitely not like some other islands, where it’s 30%+ of the building stock. It’s a larger percentage than we probably want it to be, but I don’t think it’s crippling.
In terms of wider tourism, we’ve got seven cruise ships booked in this year which is great. Coordinating cruise visits brings income to the Trust, a few island businesses and the islanders carrying out the guided tours of the Lighthouse, wool mill and bird and wildlife walks. The cruise ships themselves get a better experience because there are people on island ready to coordinate their visit, they can get access to the lighthouse and to wildlife tours that they couldn’t have done otherwise, and the passengers get a much fuller experience as well. Everybody wins.
JH: What sort of scale of cruise ships are we talking about?
LF: Generally we will take cruise ships up to about 120, 130 people, which is double the islands population of 65. We don’t get any of the big stuff that Mainland Orkney gets, but the smaller Explorer lines that want something a bit different are really interested, which is great because it really fits the market of what we can offer. Hopefully this summer will work as well as last and we’ll be able to build the offering further.
We just bought this electric minibus. We’re using some of the cruise income that the Trust receives to cover the cost of things like insurance etc. That allows us to show real upfront benefit of cruise ship visits to the community as we can help fund community transport services and the like which we otherwise wouldn’t have been able to support.
So the minibus assists the cruise ships when they visit, but also gives a real benefit to the community all year round. We can also afford to run it because of what we’re making through cruise ships and without needing to charge an arm and a leg for it.
We’re also looking at potentially getting a wheelchair accessible vehicle as well as a van further down the line. The long-term plan is to try and get a community transport system set up that allows people to not own their own vehicle, if they want to.
JH: Do you have many EV’s on Island?
LF: We have maybe 5 or 6? EVs are difficult. I’ve got one and they’re brilliant but when they go wrong, you generally need to plug them into a computer to fix them rather than some guy that knows mechanics, lifts up the bonnet. tries a few things and it’s working again.
We’re part of an Innovate UK project to trial different ways of doing community transport. We’re funded for 18 months to develop this project, which really helps as we don’t have to start making money on day one. We’re getting a chunk of funding to help cover the cost of that, cover the cost of driver time and other things as well. At the end of that project, we’re going to have a bus we own, hopefully an operating model that can be successful and can stand on its own two feet going forward, then we can grow and adapt it.
JH: The other project I was going to ask you about was the meat larder…
LF: The Meat Larder is part of the wider Pund project, so is currently being developed and hopefully will open in March 2025. It’ll provide us again with more resilience on the island and resilience to the unique sheep flock. Crofters will get more money for their sheep than they would if they get them slaughtered and a wholesale price. It also allows us to then develop things like mutton pies, which we can sell and also link to the wool mill. The hair that comes off the wool (currently a useless byproduct disposed of) we can turn into insulation for our mutton pies to then be sent off island and they’ll still be fine when they arrive at their destination. It’s that circular economy side which we’re hoping to be able to develop, using the waste from the wool mill and converting that into something that is useful.
We want them to carry on, but the issue is it’s currently not sustainable in its current form long-term because it takes so much time to keep the sheep dyke up. So it’s trying to make it so that it’s a more viable project and hopefully that will encourage more people to take on a flock of sheep, growing the flock size and get more people involved in it will help with the long-term resilience.
JH: I was reading about your annual sheep festival, what actually happens at this?
LF: What doesn’t happen at SheepFest! SheepFest is generally a week, held annually where we get a bunch of volunteers from all over the country, and even the world, coming to North Ronaldsay to rebuild sections of the sheepdyke that have come down in storms. The sheepdyke, which is actually a scheduled monument, stretches 13 miles around the outside of the island, so it’s a very big job maintaining it. Previously when the population of the island was much bigger, there’d be more people able to assist and carry out the rebuild. Nowadays the volunteers come in and they focus on a couple of sections of dyke and just do a really good job of getting that element done. That assists the Sheep Dyke Wardens who have spent the last few years maintaining the Sheep Dyke. Then we have the festival element, where volunteers take part in island workshops including felting and weaving using native wool, a traditional ceilidh dance, a Visitors vs Islanders football match, and all sorts of general fun outside of the building.
They’ve certainly rebuilt a number of miles of it. The festival is designed to be a really fun working holiday; there’s a huge amount of work carried out across the week (two sessions a day of 3hrs each) and then the workshops and dances to relax in the evening.
A huge thank you to Luke for agreeing to be interviewed and to help with our featured island. You can find out more about North Ronaldsay Trust here
Let us know if you have a suggestion for our next island of the month