Save Cumrye – The Heart of Monquhitter

Cumrye is a sheltered housing complex in Cuminestown, in the parish of Monquhitter.  Residents of Cumrye are closely integrated into the communities of Cuminestown and wider Monquhitter, often having moved in from farms in the surrounding hills. The flats and cottages host our families when it is time to put their feet up and enjoy retirement. Gorgeous gardens surrounding the buildings are maintained by the residents, with a section lent by the local playing fields. Residents are just a block away from the local shop, the community hall, weekly visits by the fishmonger and butcher, bi-weekly visits by the post office van and fortnightly fish and chippy van. We are not a dying village that needs rescue and rehoming.

Our peace was shattered

The council announced a ‘Reimagining’ of Sheltered Housing this spring with surprise meetings, traumatising residents at Cumrye and enraging our extended community. We came together and appealed to our councillors and the council to remember that no marks on a spreadsheet can make up for the valued lives of our friends and families. We did our best to respond to the review, but our hands were tied by the lack of timely information, and the chaos with which it was rolled out.

Failed by the review

The results of the ‘review’ by the council showed that Cumrye was failing in three specific places:

• No public transport or GP services. The community have provided transportation ever since the council cut our village busses in 2018, and we will keep doing that. Meanwhile, there are still discussions with the GP to reopen the surgery.  Every village is feeling the bite of Council budgetary cuts, but compounding the pain by destroying a community that is resilient enough to compensate for cuts is inefficient.
• Alternatives are available. We’ve been told that residents could move to Turriff…Though it is a lovely place, Turriff is not Cuminestown. They value seeing grandchildren more than getting to be near the ‘Big Tesco’. The other option is to relocate to houses in the village…but where do the people who need those houses go during a housing crisis? Sheltered housing was built to provide a community and relieve loneliness-which in turn relieves a lot of burden on NHS and social services. In the long term, these communities make serious savings, why destroy that instead of rethinking it?
• ‘Low Demand’. For the past four years, representatives of Cumrye have been appealing to our elected councillors for help with recruitment into Cumrye. They have reported a pattern where council officers refuse to place people in the flats, with applicants either being ignored, disqualified or being bluntly told that the flats were unavailable. Problems with the advertising and recruitment processes were reported to council officers three separate times during the review, but did not appear in the report to the committees. Instead, Cumrye was labelled ‘low demand’ and we were told no one wants to live there.

Failed by our representatives

A combined network of our community council, amenities committee, residents association and other community groups put together reasonable arguments and a request to our councillors. We are confident the only serious issue with Cumrye was the method by which the council had been advertising and filling vacancies. The Monquhitter community offered to step in and help the council, asking that they work cooperatively with us, and on a trial run for 5 years so that the council could minimize risk in the event of a failure.

Despite residents having reported issues with the council processes around recruitment for four years, none of our councillors remembered that they had been informed. None of our councillors used the committee meetings to ask the council officers about the discrepancy between our account and their reports. When we tried to raise the issue at Community Committee ourselves, we were denied the right to speak on it. 

We have evidence that local councillors knew about problems around the recruitment process that was artificially keeping vacancies open. We have documents, names and recordings of the times council officers were alerted to the problems with their processes. None of these were discussed during the committee meetings, nor were they reported to the councillors who went on to vote to close Cumrye, most in ignorance of the systematic problems.

Living in limbo

Residents in the flats have already reported significant issues with the behaviour of council officers – with promises that were made during the consultation not being kept. In addition, is still unclear how this decision will be impacting residents in the cottages (which were ‘saved’) both legally and practically.  It appears there was a chaotic rush to make a cut on a spreadsheet, and now that is completed, everyone can go on holiday -except our village that is desperately trying to pick up the shattered pieces of our homes.

Calling on Councillors to reopen, and re-evaluate

We, the undersigned, call upon Aberdeenshire Council Communities Committee to reopen the discussion around the closure of Cumrye complex with the aim of keeping residents in situ, while building a more robust financial model through co-production with the local community. A traumatic, and faulty consultation has led to many councillors making decisions they will seriously regret which are harming our village, and our families. There is still time to reverse the decision, reflect on the alternatives, and grow a more efficient, robust, resilient network of independent living facilities for our communities – large and small.