Tayvallich Initiative

IOMAIRT THAIGH A'BHEALAICH

Community ownership for affordable housing, local jobs, sustaining land and community

PROJECT MANAGER FOR TAYVALLICH INITIATIVE

Are you an experienced Project Manager who has the enthusiasm and versatility to help us drive forward our land management, renewables and housing objectives? Do you have a successful track record in fundraising to build upon the significant amount of funding we have already attracted to kick-start our Tayvallich Initiative?

We are seeking a part-time, freelance Project Manager who will work with our Board and Working Group Leads to drive forward our action plans for the next 12 months for the land our community owns. The key focus will be to identify and apply for funding opportunities to enable us to achieve our objectives as well as finding other ways to generate alternative sources of revenue. You will also take a lead in ensuring our local community continues to be as actively involved and engaged as they have been so far.

Click here for role description and details on how to apply

• Closing Date: 5pm on Monday 11 August 2025
• Interviews: Tuesday 19 August 2025 and Wednesday 20 August 2025

The Initiative

The Tayvallich peninsula in Mid Argyll is an exceptional place, where landscape and sympathetic farming enable nationally and internationally important wildlife to prosper. The local community has come together in the Tayvallich Initiative (a company limited by guarantee, with charitable status) to manage some land and houses, some of which was gift to the community and some of which was purchased with an award from Scottish Land Fund. There is some legacy land gifted by a late resident of the village, and some land and a house gifted by the former owners of Tayvallich Estate. Two community-owned houses are now owned and rented out in Tayvallich. Tayvallich Initiative was established in 2022. In 2023, after more than 70 years of ownership by one family, Tayvallich Estate, which covers around 3,500 acres of the peninsula, was sold to Highlands Rewilding Ltd. The sale creates an opportunity to secure and enhance the value of this special area. In 2023 Tayvallich Initiative also negotiated and signed a wide-reaching ground-breaking Memorandum of Understanding between Highlands Rewilding Ltd and Tayvallich Initiative.

Please consider donating using the button below

Our vision for community ownership

Our vision is to protect and enhance what makes Tayvallich and the surrounding area unique: its rich natural heritage, the community’s resilience, and the strong connection between its people and the land and sea. Reversing depopulation and maintaining and developing employment in the area are key concerns, while also maintaining the area’s natural richness and responding and adapting to the climate and biodiversity emergencies. Community land ownership helps to enable these ambitions to be realised.

Housing for affordable rent and work spaces will be developed on land near Tayvallich to attract young people to stay and work locally, in turn supporting the primary school, bus service, pub, shop, café and church. We will develop this initiative along with the local schools, to provide reasons for young people to stay.

Tayvallich Estate has more than half of the peninsula’s rented houses. Additional housing for affordable rent, or plots for house-building with a rural housing burden attached, would attract more families to help the area to thrive. A rural housing burden specifies that a property has to be the primary residence of those living there, thus helping to repopulate the area with long-term residents.

We would like to see opportunities for market gardening or community orchards to provide locally produced seasonal vegetables and fruit. We support the selling of low-impact, locally produced beef, lamb and venison to reduce food miles. Sales of venison subsidise the control of deer numbers needed for trees to grow.

In time it would be great to see regenerative starter farms or smallholdings that could provide jobs, training opportunities and locally produced food for the community.

Restoring native Atlantic rainforest where grazing is less valuable would increase biodiversity and sequester carbon. Carbon credits can be valuable. Livestock farming can also store carbon in soil. This is compatible with woodland regeneration when managed carefully.

A native tree nursery, using local seed stock, would accelerate woodland regeneration, create work and help to pay for itself through sales of saplings.

The area already attracts some low-impact visitors. Developing sensitively sited paths through the woodland closest to the village would bring health and wellbeing benefits for the school, the wider community and visitors alike.

Tayvallich Initiative will share what it learns, to help other community groups.

How you can help

The community's vision for the land owned by Tayvallich Initiative is to manage the land carefully and to progress a plan for building housing for affordable rent or offering houses/plots with rural housing burdens attached specifying that a property has to be the primary residence of those living there. It is a big challenge for a small community. We are grateful for any contribution received.

Please consider donating using the button below, or email info@tayvallichinitiative.org for more info.

Tayvallich Initiative

This MOU creates an embryonic framework to enable an evolving conversation between Highlands Rewilding and the neighbouring community. Tayvallich Initiative looks forward to developing an ongoing relationship with Highlands Rewilding as HRL works with the great potential in this area both for nature restoration and regeneration with sympathetic farming and for community prosperity and repopulation.

PROJECT MANAGER FOR TAYVALLICH INITIATIVE

The Initiative

Our vision for community ownership

How you can help

Memorandum of Understanding between Tayvallich Initiative and Highlands Rewilding