New Petitions

On behalf of Alloway and Doonfoot community council, I thank Mr Adam Ingram MSP for his guidance on preparing the petition and for securing the debate on the issue in Parliament only six weeks after our first public meeting. We are indebted to MSPs of all parties for their support and to Patricia Ferguson MSP for her timely intervention with South Ayrshire Council and the Burns trustees.In November 2004, we learned that South Ayrshire Council was to lease the Tam O'Shanter Experience and withdraw from the joint management board. We deplored that local action, which was taken with no thought about its impact on the bigger picture. We were concerned that the loss of one facility would jeopardise the viability of the Burns cottage and museum. In fact, the museum has been allowed to deteriorate to such an extent that it is no longer suitable for keeping priceless Burns artefacts, so some have already been removed for safekeeping. The lesson to be learned from that is that our Burns heritage cannot be managed piecemeal as being but one among conflicting priorities in a local authority budget, or by local groups that have limited focus and limited skills. That is not the way to develop and sustain a modern facility that will attract people from all over the world; the petition has attracted signatures from 37 countries throughout the world.We urge the Scottish Executive to recognise that our Burns heritage must be managed as a national cultural and tourism asset, and to take the lead so that a Burns national heritage park and trail of which we can be proud can be restored and ready in time for the year of homecoming in 2009. The involvement of the National Trust for Scotland in the management board must be finalised quickly. Time is short, so the Executive must try actively to remove any roadblocks and it must provide backing—including funding—until 2009 and possibly beyond. The NTS has the track record that is necessary to develop and restore the park and to market and manage it in the future. It also has expertise in working with private and commercial interests, which could be involved as required. Our vision is of a vibrant Burns national heritage museum, park and trail that together are recognised throughout the world as being among the leading tourist and cultural attractions in Scotland.

We consider that to be a positive solution to a problem that is, at this stage, massive. Something like 330,000 people visit the Tam O'Shanter Experience—its situation has brought the issue to the table—every year. From the figures that we have been given, it also appears that 25,000 visit the Burns cottage. Some of those 330,000 people are local people who go into the Tam O'Shanter Experience for a coffee, but we have to get more of those who visit the Tam O'Shanter Experience on bus trips, for example—they walk in, buy some touristy toys, have a coffee then move on—into the Burns centre.As we understand it, the heritage trail proposal would involve a one-stop ticket, which would give the ticket holder access to various places, including the Burns cottage, the Burns monument and possibly further afield, because it is not only in Ayrshire that the trail needs to be developed. We certainly welcome the proposal to have a heritage trail. We are not here just to save one part of the Burns experience; we want to improve the whole lot. It is a huge tourist attraction and it must bring a load of money into the country. We must do more with that.

Initial comments suggested that people did not care too much about the Tam O'Shanter Experience, but they have subsequently come to realise that it is in some ways a financial focal point, if not necessarily a Burns focal point. I hope that whoever ends up with it—we hope that it will be the National Trust and others—will use it as a visitor centre and that it will still be able to generate the cash that it appears to generate. It should not just be the visitor centre—it should become the focus for Burns. To be honest, the Tam O'Shanter Experience has possibly been running down and the problems have been known.

Yes, definitely—although it has perhaps not been utilised properly since then. That is my impression, although I cannot confirm that.

The community council has met the chief executive and one of the top managers of the National Trust, and we are now getting more support. The National Trust envisages the local community being involved in running the heritage centre. At present, it is run by an archaic system of trustees and nobody knows who they are. The National Trust wants the local community to be involved, which is why the whole community supports the National Trust.

There is talk of that.

There has been nothing official.

We have got millionaires staying round about the centre.

Some of them are housebuilders, unfortunately.

I can say something about the matter anecdotally. My wife is a school teacher, and I know that some stuff has been done through the schools. Her school goes to the Burns cottage in January every year—I think that they take children in primaries 6 and 7—but I am not conscious that any huge sums of money have been used to focus such activity. The issue is about focus.

No—the money is not coming through. We cannot get tickets for the Burns and a' that! festival, although we stay in Alloway. That is all done through an Edinburgh-based company, and the local council has nothing at all to do with it. The money is going there; it is not being spent on the water that is running through the inside of the Burns cottage. It is not getting to the places where it is needed.

We want it to come through the National Trust for Scotland.

Let me clarify the point about the community being involved. As I understand it, the National Trust for Scotland envisages someone from the community being on the board rather than—as the situation is now—there being a handful of people on the committee, or whatever. Such a person on the board would be able to give the man in the street's viewpoint on things. It is not about 20 people from Alloway and Doonfoot suddenly taking over and running the Tam O'Shanter Experience. The idea is to have a community representative on the board or committee.

Yes. For the past four years, the community council has attempted to get in touch with the trustees and has offered to do anything to help them. We have written about seven letters, but we have received not one reply.

Yes. The park includes the Burns cottage, the Alloway kirk—which is also in a terrible state of disrepair—the Land o' Burns centre, the Burns monument garden and what we call the Brig o' Doon. They are all in the same area.

We have no idea.

We have met one of them, who came to our public meeting but could not tell us who the other trustees were.

The only development that we know about concerns the Land o' Burns centre. The centre was visited by more than 300,000 people and, according to its books, was making money that was supposed to be used to help to run the cottage. However, we have no idea what business plans exist. The trust has said that it will take a year to get a business plan sorted out.

As we have mentioned, the campaign started with a public meeting that we held in the village hall and it has grown from there. Adam Ingram was present at that meeting and has guided us along the way, as we said in our opening statement. Along that way, we have written letters to all the members of the joint board but have received no responses. We have invited South Ayrshire Council—

No—our secretary has written the letters.

I may have misunderstood the question. Adam Ingram was the stimulus and gave us clues as to where we should direct correspondence.

No councillors or MSPs have written letters on our behalf.

No letters have been written by councillors or MSPs.

We have written letters to and received replies from all the local MPs and MSPs. We have also written to South Ayrshire Council.

However, we have received no replies from the council.

No. The letters have been written by the community council.

As far as we know, Patricia Ferguson was in Australia last year publicising it.

Yes, we agree totally.

We agree totally with you.

If a series of stages of development is required, Alloway and Doonfoot community council would first want the Burns cottage to be sorted out and preserved. Things could grow from there. I understand that Burns is heralded in 38 different locations throughout Scotland. I suspect that the National Trust for Scotland or the Scottish Executive would have a hell of a job in trying to move in a short time from the present position of doing virtually nothing to a position of having all 38 sites under some umbrella.

Are you asking what we envisage happening ideally?

Realistically, we envisage that work could be done on the Ayrshire and Dumfries sites, which would become part of a west-coast trail. The Edinburgh and east-coast side would then need to be considered. Ideally, I would like the National Trust to take over the whole thing, but I am not sure that we will ever achieve that.

No, I meant the trustees of Alloway cottage.

No. They are a very mysterious group of people.

My words at the village hall meeting were that dealing with the trustees is like finding that your jumper has a wee loose thread—once you start pulling it, it just keeps coming until you finish up with no jumper. Our experience of the trustees has been that we could not find them.

We cannot answer that because no one has taken the time to sit down and explain to us what is happening. We have had an Ayrshire and Arran Tourist Board but, suddenly, we will have no Ayrshire and Arran Tourist Board. The chief executive has now been appointed for the Ayrshire and Arran area but that person now works for VisitScotland. No one has ever taken the time to explain things to us, so we cannot answer your question.

Yes.

Our community council listened to a presentation from a chap, whose name I cannot remember, who was acting chief executive for the heritage trail. He showed us the architect's drawings for the project. I think that the figure was about £7 million.

We have heard conflicting stories. First, it was said that the amount was too much and it was scaled down. Then we heard that it was not enough and the figure was put back up. It has been a bouncing ball.