REPRESENTATIVES of the community-led Knoydart Foundation yesterday tried to persuade the Bank of Scotland to call in some of Knoydart estate's reported #1.4m debts to force the new owners to put it back on the market.
Meanwhile, one of them, Mr Stephen Hinchliffe, was in Knoydart yesterday having flown in earlier by helicopter to view his latest business interest, the last 17,000 acres of the once 80,000-acre estate.
The foundation embraces the local community, conservation bodies, and neighbouring landowners and had tabled an unsuccessful bid of #800,000 for the estate last year, after the troubled jute company Titaghur had it on the market for more than two years with an asking price of #1.5m.
Now the foundation wants the Bank of Scotland, as main creditor of Knoydart Peninsula Ltd (the company which owns the estate), to put pressure on the new owners. Two of them - Mr Hinchliffe and his associate, Mr Christopher Harrison - are being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office and the Department of Trade and Industry.
The community has despaired of years of uncertainty at the hands of one private owner after another. It has seen their counterparts in Eigg win their land and they are determined to follow their example.
The foundation was represented yesterday by former Olympic gold medal winner Chris Brasher, whose conservation trust has already committed #100,000 to the foundation's public appeal; and by Mr Nigel Hawkins, of the John Muir Trust, which owns land nearby and has also committed #100,000 to the Knoydart cause.
For its part, the Bank of Scotland appeared determined to answer a question that nobody was asking. Before the meeting with the foundation, it issued a statement: ''To set the record straight, Bank of Scotland does not and never did have any ownership of the Knoydart estate and the comments suggesting that Bank of Scotland was party to recent transfer of shares in Knoydart Peninsula Ltd are incorrect.
''Bank of Scotland's relationship is purely as a creditor of KPL. What has happened is a transfer of shareholdings of KPL between third parties but this is a matter with which Bank of Scotland had no involvement.''
After the meeting, Mr Hawkins said: ''I think it was a step forward. The bank said they were bound by customer confidentiality but did indicate they had a meeting with the new owners and suggested the foundation might seek to do the same, which I think we will consider doing.''
In Knoydart, attention centred on the arrival of Mr Hinchliffe. He was the chairman of the Facia retailing empire, which collapsed in 1996, leaving debts of more than #100m. Last month, it emerged that he and Facia's former finance director, Mr Charles Harrison, were part of the consortium which had taken over control of KPL from the jute company Titaghur.
Mr Hinchliffe lives at Dore, a village outside Sheffield, in a 12-room house with swimming pool, extensive lawns, and a helicopter pad, which allows him easy access to Inverie. What exactly KPL's plans are for Knoydart are not clear.
To date, their only public action has been to sack estate manager Ian Robertson who had kept the estate running without pay for the last 18 months.
The sacking led Mr Bernie Evemy, chairman of Knoydart Community Association, to write to KPL's managing director, Mr John Turvill, earlier this week: ''The longer the present ethos continues the more deeply the resentment and distrust will become entrenched . . . I fear we have now reached a critical stage. The new owners must decide whether they wish to be in continual conflict not only with the people of Knoydart but also the media and the public at large.''
The Herald tried several times to contact Mr Hinchliffe and Mr Turvill at Inverie House yesterday. Mrs Turvill finally told The Herald ''They can't talk to you. They are busy trying to put things right just now and I think they should be left to get on with it.''
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