Go Golspie Development Trust

Go Golspie Development Trust

Go Golspie Development Trust has been formed to benefit the community of Golspie

Go Golspie Development Trust is an organisation that has been set up to assist in the development of Golspie’s assets. The main aim of the group is to assist in creating and improving job opportunities along with affordable housing. The first part of this journey is to develop and manage this community website for Golspie.

Our vision:

  • To support our local community.
  • Help maintain, develop and improve the society, environment and economy of the Golspie community by developing sustainable, relevant and desired facilities and services.
  • Assist the community to achieve its collective needs and ambitions.

Our aims:

  • Go Golspie Development Trust has been formed to benefit the community of Golspie.
Go Golspie Driver Diagram

History

Go Golspie Development Trust (GGDT) was set up in 2015 by a local steering group and were assisted by An Roth Trading (Community owned consultancy company) to produce the initial development plan for the village and surrounding area. Currently the GGDT board comprises 11 members who all live locally and meet monthly to manage the day to day planning and review. Current discussions and planning are taking place about community feedback to allow the board to form future longer term priorities with the community. The GGDT board did hold a fundraising and engagement event on Saturday 24th May 2019 in the Fountain Road Hall and by end of September 2019 will also seek to engage both primary and secondary schools locally in collecting data to inform longer term priorities.

During 2018 we held two events within the village to talk to the community, one was the ‘Trip up the Ben’ in August 18 where over 35 people accessed the top of the hill in 4x4s. Over 50 people were involved in this event with local drivers giving their time and vehicles to transport those with limited mobility. In January 2019 we held an event in the Stags Head Hotel Golspie to launch the new community bus with an aim of growing our membership. (which is free) Again over 50 people attended this event. Our membership has now grown in the last year from 80 to 157 members.

Transport

Transport continues to be a focus of need as identified within the Golspie Locality Plan (see link to the Golspie community plan here) this plan was drawn up following local residents feedback. The community bus has proved a great success with local users groups who have accessed the vehicle in its first 6 months of operation. We have had block bookings for the bus from the Golspie lunch club, the pipe band and are in discussions with Key housing at the moment. Brora Cubs, 2 x different football clubs have accessed the bus to go to Lossiemouth and Orkney and it has also been used for a birthday party day out for young children to Inverness.

We now have 17 MIDAS trained drivers and we thank all those organisations who funded the costs of the MIDAS training at £480 per day for 6 drivers, this allowed GG to support the local user groups to access this training at no extra cost. The bus has already undergone its maintenance checks and this will now become part of the ongoing maintenance requirements.

We are delighted that our bus booking system has been installed on the Go Golspie website and seems to be working well. Once your booking has been approved back to you by email please send your completed booking form to info@gogolspie.co.uk and we can then allocate a driver for your booking, (this allows us to see the detail of the journey and how many people will be travelling)