Gatehouse development initiative

Gatehouse of fleet lies in the heart of the fleet Valley national Scenic Area in dumfries and Galloway. many of the town’s community projects are supported by Gatehouse development initiative, as Company Secretary Ken Smyth explains:

the Gatehouse development initiative (Gdi) provides ‘umbrella’ support for community projects and can save smaller projects the need to be formally established in their own right. we can provide support with fundraising, provide insurance and public liability cover, and provide book-keeping and accountancy services. Getting involved in our many projects is open to all, and projects each have their own project manager and usually a project team.

Amongst the projects which Gdi delivers are the community website and a community magazine, Gatehouse News, six times per year. And we support a number of environmental activities:

the Fleet Valley Volunteers meet every wednesday morning to work in the landscape in and around Gatehouse – keeping paths clear, creating habitat piles, planting trees and restoring woodland. these tasks keep the largely retirement-age volunteers physically active in a lively, social group. As council funding is squeezed the group has taken on the maintenance of the town Hall Garden, a pretty, council-owned garden on the site of the former town hall.

the Gatehouse Squirrel Group is active in protecting our important red squirrel population, monitoring numbers of both reds and greys, and the group recently established a popular wildlife hide in the Cally woods on the edge of the town.

we also have our community cycling project Wheels of Fleet which supports community cycling by running workshops in bicycle maintenance and road craft, and also organises community-led bike rides for young and old. the project hires out bikes daily or longer

term to both locals and visitors and it takes in donations of unwanted bikes which it refurbishes or strips down for spares. the project is thriving and has recently provided over thirty bikes to ukrainian refugee families.

the dry Stone walling Association was founded in Gatehouse in the 1960s to preserve and encourage this traditional craft. today our area is still criss-crossed by drystone dykes and this rural craft continues to flourish across the country. over the years Gdi has been involved in a number of european heritage projects and drystone walling is one of the traditional crafts which we have championed at these meetings with our european partners. earlier this year Gdi organised a five-day drystone dyking course for forestry apprentices in the local Cally woods. the course participants are pictured left and above, and they also feature in a short video which can be viewed here

we are always open to approaches from the community for a new project. if they can show a community need, can lead on it, and pull a team together to take it forward, the Gdi is there to assist and to help make it happen.

Gatehouse of fleet website