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Support for Harbour Purchase

PORTPATRICK residents came out in force to pledge their support for the local purchase of their harbour on Monday night.

The Small Towns Initiative have agreed to help the residents in their drive for community ownership and were due to discuss the way forward at their Board meeting yesterday (Wednesday) after 151 locals signed up to the idea of buying the badly disintegrating harbour from the present owners Leisure Harbours Ltd.

At Monday's meeting it emerged that the favoured way forward is for the villagers to create a co-operative group by paying one pound for a share which would entitle each of them to one vote if they took over the management of the harbour.

But before then a steering group must be formed which will target funding to buy the harbour with the Lottery-owned Scottish Land Fund the likely benefactors and thirty locals volunteered their names to be thrown into the hat to form such a committee.

Councillor Grahame Forster said that Leisure Harbours Ltd had already agreed to sell the harbour, but it was important to have the district valuer put a price on it first.