On June 12 1997 the residents of Eigg made history in Scotland after completing the purchase of the island for £1.5million.

Under the previous landlord, islanders had endured poor housing conditions, a lack of employment opportunities and poor infrastructure.

Eigg became the poster-child for community ownership, growing its population from 68 to 110 people.

Job opportunities opened up, businesses flourished and new homes were built and the island now has its own electricity and broadband supply.

However, islanders say all the work it has done to improve life on Eigg is "now benefitting those with deeper pockets and estate agents."

(Image: Martini archive)

It does not have the same issues with second homes as other islands but as it becomes better known and infrastructure improves, the island is becoming more attractive and property prices have soared.

Up to 20% of islanders are said to be living in temporary or unsuitable accommodation such as caravans, yurts, sheds or winter lets.

Some are forced to move between temporary homes to fit in with the tourist season.

The Isle of Eigg Heritage Trust (IHET) is Eigg’s largest provider of social housing and has been trying to build two houses for six years.

The main source of funding for such projects is the Rural and Island Housing Fund but the process of securing the funds can take a long time.

The island factor adds 40%+ to construction costs on islands like Eigg and the community faces particular challenges.

Eigg’s only weight-limited, single-track road prevents the use of a crane, making cheaper, modular building, impossible.

Commercial landing craft are the only alternative to limited timetable connections provided on the CalMac ferry.

Accommodating workers breaks up the accommodation week and displaces tourists, upon whom Eigg’s wider economy is very dependent

In common with a lot of older, traditional stone houses, some of the older properties need work to bring them up to energy-efficiency standards.

Eigg homes are nearly four times as likely to suffer from damp than homes in Scotland overall. 

 "The big thing to underpin is that we know we are not alone in this," says Rebecca Long, development manager for the Isle of Eigg Heritage Trust:

"We are five miles by three miles.

"It's not a huge amount of land mass and although we manage our own island, much of the land is tenanted with either agricultural tenancies or crofting tenancies so we are a little bit more limited in terms of ground that we can or would want to develop.

Rebecca Long and Maggie Fyffe who head up the Isle of Eigg Heritage TrustRebecca Long and Maggie Fyffe who head up the Isle of Eigg Heritage Trust (Image: Isle of Eigg Heritage Trust)

"The other thing that the trust had done over the years is not to displace individual opportunities for development so we do have a housing masterplan of different plots which could be potentials for development but again we are trying to balance trust priorities against individual opportunities."

"The masterplan is obviously dependent on what infrastructure we have and we not connected to anything here," adds long-term resident Maggie Fyffe (IEHT Secretary).

She moved to Eigg in 1976 from the east coast after meeting the island’s former laird Keith Shellenberg, who died in 2019.

"He offered us a job here, working within a craft centre that we had to really build first,” she says.

"After five years we got a croft and a derelict house that we did up.

"Some places you see adverts that they want to increase the population, "she added.

"We've never done that, although the population has doubled since we bought Eigg but it's happened very slowly which is good for a number of reasons.

"If a load of people moved in it would be too much.

"We have to bear in mind availability of electricity because that's our own system, which is limited and water is another issue."

Everyone within Eigg has a 5kw electricity limit.

“It means at the moment we can't use air source heat pumps and planning laws are only allowing new builds to have zero emissions," she says.

Getting people out of temporary accommodation has been top of the Trust's agenda for the past six years.

"At the moment we are saying something like 10-20% of people are living in temporary accommodation, says Ms Long, who moved to Eigg after visiting the island for a party.  

"The Trust has already got ten homes for affordable rent. I live in one and I'm extremely fortunate.

"It's given me a secure base on the island and it's given me a home and a stake in the community. I can't imagine putting myself in other peoples' position."

"I know what it was like back then," added the Trust's secretary.

"If felt like we were on a fine line. 

“He (Keith Shellenberg) said to me one day that he had heard that we still had a house on the mainland and he said 'I wouldn't be getting rid of that because you might need it.'

"I was pregnant at the time and I remember being devastated and so worried that he was about to kick us out and we would have to leave Eigg.

"Around about that time there were an awful lot of people living in caravans then, people with small children. You don't commit to a place."


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She said a couple of people had recently left the island.

 "It's really upsetting - it leaves a big hole in a community of this size," she says.

"We have got a good story - rising population, we've increased economic development, we've got diversification of economy, we've got a varied social demographic," added Ms Long.

"We have lots of amazing things to promote but we need to be able to retain, sustain and further develop that population and if we are not in a position to be able to grow housing stock in particular then that economic and social development is jeopardised. 

"Housing is at the very root of everything."