Lews Castle row

Sir,

Thank you Angus for enlightening us, the amount of public money spent on the Castle project is actually £19 million (ref: Lews Castle will be kept in Comhairle ownership). Does that include the overspend the council identified some six weeks ago? Allowing, say, £6 million for the museum, a sum of £13 million plus has been spent on the castle from public funds. I was way out with my estimated figure of only £7.5 million.

It was never said by me that the castle had been sold by the Comhairle, but that it had been passed to a multinational company, (this for a period of 30 years).There is a contract between the Comhairle and Natural Retreats to this effect is there not? Where in my letter did it say that ownership had been transferred?

Further, Mr Campbell notes that I or anyone else could have bid on the procurement contract and is at best disingenuous in suggesting this. Whilst I and many other local businesses support Kenman Holdings’ legal challenge, our main concern is the damage to be done to our businesses by the substantial competitive advantage handed to Natural Retreats as a result of the many millions of public subsidy given over to this project by the council and other public agencies, and the displacement of trade it will cause. I use a simple analogy below for the benefit of the council leader.

Imagine, Angus,that HIE found £13 million and bought Stag Bakeries. They then built the mother of all filling stations immediately opposite yours. And then they found a mainland operator willing to run this excellent new facility and then gave them three years rent free and a peppercorn rent thereafter for the next 30 years.

The new operator could cut his petrol prices by, say 20%, because he would be benefiting from having a very obvious unfair commercial advantage.Very soon every car on the island would be filling up there and your business would sink. This is displacement, you know exactly what it is, but you choose to try and confuse the electorate by sending them down a side road, trying to show me as a disgruntled individual griping about not winning a contract.

One final point though regarding the tendering procedure - a council official involved in the castle project gave a very informed talk to the Outer Hebrides Tourism Association in 2013. He explained that the castle was to become an eight bedroomed 5 star hotel. Great we all thought, no problem with that, there will be no displacement, no one locally is operating in that market, it has our full support.

At no time were we told that the initial tender to find an operator had floundered and that the castle was instead to be a 26 bed self-catering unit. In fact most of your own councillors didn’t know of this change in direction until I e-mailed them on 18th February 2014. Nor did anyone in the tourism industry or indeed the wider general public.

So much for our leaders oft quoted “open and transparent procurement process.” At no time has he mentioned that were in fact TWO tendering processes. The “simple fact” is that had the tendering been done fairly and properly then there would have been no need for anyone to make a legal challenge or a state aids complaint.

Our leader should know the truth will eventually come out.

Graham McLellan

Hebridean Luxury Holidays Ltd

29 Kenneth St

Stornoway

Letter: Council leader "trying to confuse" people over Lews Castle

25 April 2016