Salmon company granted approval for eco-friendly homes on Eday
(Scottish Sea Farms)
A salmon farming company has been granted approval to build six new eco-friendly homes on Eday.
Scottish Sea Farms, together with local landowners Haydn Jones and Nick Lyde of Willowstream, are to build the homes at Mill Bay on Eday, which has 76 habitable properties for a population of 129 people.
Costing £0.75 million, the new development will create four new homes for employees of the nearby salmon farm, helping overcome the lack of available accommodation, with a further two homes available to rent by islanders or visitors.
Scottish Sea Farms’ Phil Boardman, farm manager at Eday, said: “We’ve been farming on the island for over seven years now and while the conditions for growing salmon are superb, the remote location has made recruitment difficult.
“Unless employees live on one of the nearby islands such as Sanday, they face a two-hour commute by boat from Orkney mainland, then have to stay over on one of the islands until their next weekend off, leaving little time for family, food shopping or looking after home and garden. The result is that we have seen valued employees leave with every crop cycle – they loved the job, just not the logistics that go with it.”
Local landowner and co-director of Willowstream, Haydn Jones, commented: “We’re really looking forward to getting things underway on site, particularly in terms of applying the experience we have gained improving our own land to help breathe new life into this remote bay and to Eday as a whole. Both have been long-held aspirations of ours, but both are reliant on the island having jobs and homes.”
Support locally for the new homes has been strong.
Mr Boardman added: “From the architect, Orkney Islands Council planning team and local SEPA office, to the contractors we’re using and our logistics partners Northwards who will help transport the homes to the island, local partnerships have been key to making this project happen. Get it right and this eco-friendly development could be the start of things to come for remote communities such as Eday.”
Full details in The Orcadian next week.
