Community Car Update

Thank you all for the replies, positive or negative, that you took time to complete to allow us to assess the interest in a community car.  The results of the survey were split with approx 43% interested, 35% possibly interested and 22% saw no requirement from them for a community car.  

Since then we have explored how we could introduce a car and although we approached 3 potential car club operators, following a meeting we initiated with the National Park Authority (CNPA) we decided to wait.  The wait was initiated as during the meeting with CNPA we learned that they were independently exploring whether they could establish a park wide community car scheme that we could be a part of.  We have declared an interest in both the scheme and in becoming becoming a pilot and earlier this week we received a proposal from CNPA that we are currently evaluating.  The scheme is not exactly what we were planning as it appears to involve us procuring a car(s) and managing its repairs etc, however,  it may be cheaper overall to run from the users' perspective.   We need to understand more about how we could make this work in Ballater as it places a significant burden on us and everyone involved here are volunteers.  

We are continuing to evaluate the options we have, both the CNPA proposal and joining an established car club,  As part of this we will explore fully whether we can secure a grant for the vehicle.  When we have more information we will update you all again via the Ballater Community Trust website with our findings.  

In the meantime thank you to everyone who took part in the survey.   

Bruce Lawson