Councillor's Column - Dougie McFadzean, Kintyre and the Islands, September 12 2025
Thanks for taking the time to read my Councillor’s Column for September. It’s been an extremely busy period for me, requiring me to travel all over Kintyre and the Islands, and beyond.
I had the pleasure of attending a series of workshops in Campbeltown organised by the brilliant Shopper Aid charity which has supported the people of Campbeltown and beyond for many years.
I was joined by officers from the Health and Social Care Partnership, the council and volunteers from local charities where we discussed the challenges and opportunities our organisations face in these tough times. It was an excellent event organised by Susan and Paul.
A couple of days later I attended the Mid Argyll Area Committee meeting in the beautiful Southend village hall.
After the meeting I was given a tour of the hall by Tim, where we discussed how the hall was used as a warm/safe space during the recent storms.
The facilities are superb and include an electricity generator which allowed residents to cook food and keep warm during the prolonged power cuts.
This is a brilliant example of community resilience. It’s so important to me to connect with our communities, and the only way to do this is to meet people and speak with them face to face.
Talking about the recent storms, I am pleased to report that most of the council’s bridges, roads and buildings have now been repaired.
There have been significant engineering challenges in carrying out these repairs, with the example of the very old, small road bridge near Cluanach on Islay being a prime example.
This single track road was closed for very many months to allow repairs to be affected on the bridge and I was glad to visit the bridge to see the completed work and the open road.
There’s an iconic lighthouse on an uninhabited island off Islay called Orsay, which recently celebrated it’s 200th anniversary. A small group of volunteers got together over a year ago with the aim of delivering a community event to celebrate the anniversary. What an event they organised!
Over three days the villages of Portnahaven and Port Wemyss were deluged with hundreds of visitors enjoying the myriad of local craft stalls, boat trips to Orsay, live music, singing and dancing in the village hall.
I took the opportunity to attend and visited the lighthouse and its empty houses. It was a fantastic experience and well done to everyone who pulled this together. Another example of true community spirit.
The chief officer of our Health and Social Care Partnership visited Islay a couple of weeks ago, which gave me the opportunity to introduce him to Islay’s dental team, led by Marcin and Ada Paradowski.
They have transformed the dental offering on Islay, investing a lot of money and time into the practice.
The chief officer left the visit very impressed and full of ideas about dental provision across Argyll and Bute.
The visitor levy proposals will be discussed by councillors at the next full council meeting on Wednesday September 24. These proposals have generated a huge amount of interest and debate and are undoubtedly controversial.
The meeting will be live streamed if you wish to observe the proceedings, with details of how to access the stream on the council website. There are many challenging decisions to be made in the months to come, this being one of them.
As always, if you think I can help, please get in touch.
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