The Howard family would like to address the recent articles posted below that have been published in the Oban Times this month (Thursday 25th January 2018).

As the current owners of Ulva, we continue to comply with the Land Reform legislation which unfortunately limits our choices with regard to the future of our beloved island. We only want the best for Ulva’s future and of course will continue to offer our support and reassurance to Barry George and the Munro family if the buy-out proposal is unsuccessful. As previously mentioned there are steps we can take to ensure their future on Ulva if the island does go to a private buyer. We are not going to just give our home away to the “highest bidder”, we have invested a huge amount of our lives on this island and we would not allow the next owner/s to come in and close off this precious place to outsiders.

Having lived and farmed full time on Ulva for the last 70 years the Howard family know too well the difficulties of running a remote Island. With this experience, we feel that the NWMCWC may have underestimated the challenges of running Ulva along with the associated costs of development. Understandably the, unelected, NWMCWC are relying heavily on the Scottish Government to provide the over-whelming majority of the funds not only to purchase the island but to continue to support its future at the taxpayer’s expense.

Anyone who lives or travels to Mull can quite quickly see where this so called £4 million plus could be better spent encouraging the ever-depleting rural community to remain in the area and not be drawn to the prospect of better jobs and easier access to public services that towns and cities can offer. This opinion is clearly felt by the majority of the, elected, Mull community council who overwhelmingly voted 7:1 against the moving forward of the NWMCWC bid. (see Oban Times article below)

The buy-out bid not only affects the Ulva and North-west Mull community it will have a ripple effect on the whole of Mull and beyond so it is important that the right decision is made.

(Click to enlarge)