A north-east community group will next week officially take over ownership of the building it has called home for almost seven decades.
Fraserburgh’s Old Age Pensioners’ Association has been a hall in the town’s Union Grove for nearly 70 years – under the mistaken impression that it owned the property and ground.
But after trawling through years of contracts, the local authority has confirmed that it still has responsibility for the hall.
And at its Banff and Buchan area committee meeting on Tuesday, the council is expected to hand over the deeds to the building – valued at £40,000 – to the pensioners.
The authority’s legal team found that the land itself was sold to Fraserburgh’s town council in 1921 by Lord Saltoun.
A letter from 1951 was also unearthed from the association which indicates that the council did not want to sell the land, but was instead prepared to let the site.
No evidence of such a lease, however, was ever found.
Ritchie Johnson, the council’s director of business services, has now urged councillors to finally agree to the sale of the building despite the “notional loss” of the land’s worth.
In his report to members of the committee, he says the local authority has never carried out any maintenance to the building, despite owning it.
“The association has made a good job of running the hall and it is used for a number of social activities, but the absence of any legal basis for their being in occupation of the hall, far less owning it, had left them in something of a vulnerable position,” Mr Johnson added.
“Given that the council has played no role concerning the hall, whether financial or otherwise since it was built, the unanimous view of the group was that the most appropriate solution was for the hall to be disposed of to the association without payment.”
