11th August 2026
The transfer of Invergordon Town Hall to community ownership could be a sign of something much bigger happening across Scotland – as financially stretched councils increasingly look to communities to take responsibility for the buildings at the heart of their towns and villages.
For generations, town halls, village halls, community centres, playing fields and other public buildings have been seen as part of the basic infrastructure of local government.
Councils owned them, maintained them and paid the bills.
But that model is increasingly under pressure.
The latest example is Invergordon Town Hall, where the Black Isle and Easter Ross Area Committee has now officially approved its Community Asset Transfer to the local community.
It is an important development for Invergordon, but it also raises a much bigger question:
Is community ownership gradually becoming the future of Scotland's public buildings?
Invergordon is part of a much bigger Highland story
Highland Council has been using Community Asset Transfer for several years.
Under the system introduced following the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015, community organisations can request to take ownership or a lease of publicly owned assets, sometimes at considerably less than their market value.
The objective is not simply to sell council property.
Instead, the argument is that an asset may produce greater long-term community benefit if local people take control of it.
Highland Council's figures demonstrate how far the process has already progressed.
By 2024, the council reported that it had transferred 31 assets since the legislation came into force and had approved more than 50 requests, although some were still going through the legal process.
During 2024/25, the council received five new asset-transfer requests and agreed seven transfers. Five involved ownership and two involved leases.
The discounts on market value ranged from 30% to 100%.
That is significant.
It means that Highland Council is not necessarily trying to obtain the maximum possible price for these properties.
Instead, it is recognising that there can be a greater public benefit in putting an asset into community hands.
Why would a council do this?
The answer is partly financial.
A large old public building can be extremely expensive to maintain.
There are:
heating bills
electricity
insurance
routine maintenance
roof and structural repairs
accessibility requirements
fire safety
staffing and administration
major refurbishment costs.
And councils are under enormous pressure to protect spending on essential services.
A town hall may be enormously valuable to the community but still represent a significant financial liability to a council.
That creates a difficult choice.
Keep the building and find the money to maintain it – or transfer it to a community organisation which can try to find the money itself.
Community Asset Transfer offers a third possibility:
Keep the building in community use while transferring responsibility for its future to local people.
That can be a very attractive proposition for a council struggling with its budget.
Invergordon shows both sides of the argument
The Invergordon Town Hall case is particularly interesting because the building is historic and has an important place in the town.
But historic buildings can also be expensive buildings.
The challenge is not simply acquiring the property.
Someone then has to pay for its future.
That is where community ownership becomes both exciting and challenging.
A community organisation can potentially apply for grants that would not be available to the council, raise money locally, attract charitable funding, develop commercial activities and use volunteers.
But once the transfer takes place, the community also inherits much of the responsibility.
Ownership brings opportunity – but it also brings bills.
That distinction is sometimes lost in the enthusiasm surrounding community ownership.
Scotland already has a growing community ownership movement
This is not confined to town halls.
The Scottish Land Commission reported in July 2026 that more than 500 community organisations now own more than 850 assets across Scotland.
Those assets are being used to provide jobs, homes, community facilities and local services.
The Commission is now calling for greater support, including increased Scottish Land Fund resources, multi-year funding and better access to legal, planning and technical expertise.
That tells us something important.
Community ownership is no longer a marginal experiment involving a handful of enthusiastic volunteers.
It is becoming an established part of Scotland's economic and social landscape.
The village hall was only the beginning
For many rural communities, the transfer of a village hall to a local organisation has already become familiar.
A hall that once belonged to the council becomes the responsibility of a community association or development trust.
The community then organises events, hires out rooms, applies for grants and raises money to keep the building open.
But the model is now becoming much more ambitious.
We are seeing communities becoming involved with:
town halls
former schools
sports facilities
land
tourism businesses
community centres
renewable-energy projects
heritage buildings
commercial property.
This represents a significant change in the relationship between local government and local communities.
And Caithness is already ahead of the curve
This is where the story becomes particularly relevant locally.
Caithness already has organisations capable of taking on responsibilities that would once have been regarded as primarily the job of the council or another public body.
The Wick Development Trust, established in 2019, has the long-term objective of supporting the regeneration of Wick. It became a registered charity in 2021.
And it is not simply an organisation that produces reports and campaigns.
In 2022, the Trust took ownership of the Wick Caravan and Camping Site, now operating as Wick River Campsite.
It is run as a not-for-profit community enterprise, with profits intended to be reinvested into the campsite and community projects in Wick.
That is a very useful example of what community ownership can actually mean.
The community is not merely being given a building.
It is acquiring an income-generating asset which can potentially help finance other community activities.
That is arguably the more sustainable model.
Thurso has a similar opportunity
Thurso Community Development Trust was formed in 2018 and became a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation in 2019.
Its stated purpose is community-led sustainable development and it already works on projects intended to improve the town's economy, environment, facilities and quality of life.
Its approach is particularly interesting because it explicitly talks about taking a place-based approach to developing facilities and services according to community needs.
That could become increasingly important if councils continue to reduce their direct involvement in community infrastructure.
The question may eventually become:
What should the council continue to own – and what should local communities own themselves?
There is a major difference between community ownership and privatisation
This distinction matters.
When a council sells a building commercially, the highest bidder normally wins.
The building could become:
flats
offices
a supermarket
a private business
or potentially be demolished.
Community Asset Transfer is different.
The purpose is to retain the asset for community benefit.
A development trust, community company or charity can own the building, but it cannot simply treat it as a conventional private investment.
That is one of the reasons community ownership can preserve buildings that might otherwise disappear from public use.
But there is a danger
There is another side to this story which should not be ignored.
Community ownership must not become a convenient way for governments to shift costs from taxpayers to volunteers.
It is relatively easy to celebrate a community taking over a building.
It is much harder to keep that building functioning for the next 20 years.
Volunteers can organise fundraising events.
They can paint rooms.
They can run committees.
But they cannot necessarily raise hundreds of thousands of pounds every time a roof needs replacing.
Nor can volunteers be expected to provide indefinitely the professional expertise required for property management, finance, employment law, health and safety and major capital projects.
This is why the Scottish Land Commission's call for stronger post-acquisition support is important.
Community ownership needs community finance as well as community enthusiasm.
The potential upside is enormous
Done properly, however, the model could transform parts of rural Scotland.
Imagine a community owning:
a town hall + a café + offices + meeting rooms + a tourism business + renewable energy assets.
Some parts could generate income which supports other activities.
Instead of every facility depending entirely on council funding, the community could develop a small local economic ecosystem.
That is very different from simply asking volunteers to keep an old hall open.
It is potentially a form of local economic development.
And this is where development trusts such as those in Wick and Thurso could become increasingly important.
They have the organisational structure, community membership and experience to consider projects that individual village committees might find difficult.
What happens if councils become smaller?
There is an even bigger question underneath all this.
For decades, local government in Scotland has gradually become responsible for an enormous range of services.
But if council finances continue to tighten, something has to change.
One possibility is higher taxation.
Another is reducing services.
Another is greater efficiency.
And another is transferring some responsibilities and assets to communities.
The last option could actually be positive if it is done properly.
A distant council department in Inverness may know that a building needs £500,000 of investment.
Local people may know exactly what they want to do with it.
They may also be able to combine grants, donations, volunteers, commercial income and community investment in ways that a council cannot.
But the reverse can also happen.
A community could accept an asset because it fears losing it, only to discover later that the financial burden is greater than expected.
Could Caithness see more transfers?
It is certainly possible.
There is already a network of community organisations across Caithness, and both Wick and Thurso have development trusts with ambitions that go well beyond simply organising local events.
Wick Development Trust already demonstrates that a community organisation can own and operate a commercial enterprise.
Thurso Community Development Trust has developed a broad programme of community-led projects and has a stated ambition to strengthen local facilities and the local economy.
If Highland Council increasingly examines which properties it can afford to maintain, it would be entirely reasonable to expect local communities to start asking:
Could we run this ourselves?
That could include buildings, land, community facilities and perhaps other assets that have traditionally been regarded as council responsibilities.
A new form of local government?
Perhaps the most interesting possibility is that Scotland could gradually develop a two-level model of local public life.
The council would concentrate on services that require scale and professional expertise:
roads
social care
planning
education
waste
major infrastructure.
Meanwhile, communities could increasingly control:
town halls
village halls
community centres
local tourism facilities
parks
heritage buildings
commercial community enterprises
local regeneration projects.
That would represent a profound change.
It would mean that communities were not simply recipients of council services.
They would become owners and economic participants in their own communities.
But who benefits?
There is one final question that deserves much more attention.
If councils transfer public buildings because they cannot afford them, who ultimately benefits from the change?
The answer could be everyone.
The council reduces its financial liabilities.
The community retains an important building.
Local people gain greater control.
And successful community enterprises can generate income which stays locally.
But it could also go wrong if the community receives the asset without the resources required to maintain it.
The difference between those two outcomes will depend on the financial support, expertise and long-term planning that accompany the transfer.
The beginning of something much bigger?
Invergordon Town Hall may therefore be more than another local property transaction.
It could be another step towards a different model of local government in Scotland.
The old model was relatively simple:
The council owns it.
The council pays for it.
The council runs it.
The emerging model could look very different:
The community owns it.
The community runs it.
The community finds ways to make it pay for itself.
That could prove to be one of the most important changes in rural Scotland over the next decade.
And with development trusts already operating in places such as Wick and Thurso, Caithness may be particularly well placed to take advantage of it.
The real test, however, will not be how many buildings councils can transfer.
It will be whether communities have the money, skills and long-term support needed to make ownership work.
Because transferring a town hall is relatively easy.
Keeping its doors open for the next 50 years is the real challenge.
Note
Community Asset Transfer Request – Invergordon Town Hall
A decision was reached to grant the Invergordon Development Trust a 99-year lease of the Invergordon Town Hall for a nominal cost of £1 per annum.
The Trust plans to restore the 1871 building, which was previously underused and deteriorating into a vibrant, multipurpose civic hub featuring a café, exhibition space, and community venue.
Welcoming the decision, Chair, Cllr Johnston said: “This Community Asset Transfer marks an exciting new chapter for Invergordon. Transferring this historic property to the Invergordon Development Trust unlocks its vast potential as a multipurpose civic hub, generating far greater social, economic, and wellbeing benefits for the town than a standard commercial lease.”