Community Councillors present: Ed Pybus (convener.kilfinancc@gmail.com), Nicola Greenall, John Butcher, Catriona Renfrew (secretary.kilfinancc@gmail.com), John McColl, John Butcher, Vicky Wince. Apologies: Robin Webster.

Minutes of August 2025 meeting were agreed and are available on our website.

The A and B Council has turned down our request for larger bins at Glenan woods and Otter Ferry. We will ask Councillor Sinclair to intervene.

A range of issues with roads have been raised by our residents, including over hanging trees, pavements, resurfacing and the lack of speed limits at Millhouse and in other places. We agreed to have a focus on roads, including speed limits for our 25th November meeting. We will widely publicise this and invite councillors and council officers. If you have issues you want discussed at this meeting, please email them to secretary.kilfinancc@gmail.com or speak to a community councillor and come along to the meeting.

An open event on community Resilience and emergency planning happened at the beginning of October and will be reported back to the next meeting and widely communicated. Correspondence from a resident highlighted ambulance delays and communication issues. These issues will be covered in our emergency planning work.

Broadband update: The national project team have indicated that late 2026 may be the deadline for superfast access. KCC think this is too long with connectivity a major issue for rural communities and will raise concerns.

West Cowal Habitat Regeneration Project: Iain Dow, Woodland coordinator, attended and gave an interesting overview of the project working across Argyll, with two areas identified as priorities, West Cowal (covering the KCC area) and Knapdale. The aim was to tackle issues damaging the rainforest including species invasion and deer control. KCC agreed we want to be involved in the deer management structures and planning of the Glendarual larder. KCC can also help to challenge landowners about biodiversity.

KCC are a statutory consultee on forestry plans and agreed KCC should set up a sub group and look for support from Forestry Scotland.

Proposal is to launch the draft local place plan at the end of October producers’ market for 28 days consultation to be finalised by end January.

We will promote discussion on improving our villages linked to the work on the local place plan.

The meeting heard that our attempts to engage Mull Car Club on issues with their proposed 2026 rally routes had not made any progress. The meeting agreed KCC would write to MCC setting out our changes to reduce disruption to residents, businesses and tourists. More information is on the rally section of the KCC website. We will also write to UK Motorsport and the A and B Council to raise our concerns that the views of the communities we represent have been disregarded.

Portavadie Ferry disruption: KCC will raise community concerns about the increasing disruption on a route which is critical for our residents.

Date of next meeting: 28/10 at 18.00 in Kames Hall.