Stornoway Trust factor, Iain Maciver, has been elected as the Western Isles choice for the Crofting Commission..
Only ten votes separated the race between him and former Comhairle boss, Alasdair MacEachan in the election for the board of the crofting regulator.
Mr Maciver from Lewis polled 1069 votes. Turnout at 43% saw 2134 people voting with six spoilt ballot slips.
Iain Maciver said the vote “strengthens the case” for having a commission representative for Lewis and Harris and one for Uist and Barra.
He said: “I’m particularly pleased there has been a reasonably good turnout and that
the vote was close -
That would be a significant step as the Western Isles covers a huge area, he added.
“Crofting is very important for the Western Isles and there is a diversity of crofting in many ways.”
Plus “two heads are better than one,” he said.
To date, the Scottish Government has ignored the view that having one constituency for the Western Isles, containing almost one third of all crofts, is too large both in terms of number of crofts and difficulty in covering the number of islands the area contains.
The six new commissioners are:
New Western Isles crofting commissioner calls for two island representatives
17 March 2017