Bakkafrost wins go-ahead for staff accommodation at shore base

Salmon farmer Bakkafrost Scotland has been granted planning permission to provide housing for its workers at a site in Scalpay off the coast of Harris due to a lack of available accommodation in the area, the BBC reports.

Bakkafrost will install 14 temporary units – seven on the ground floor and seven on top of them – and a “welfare unit” with a kitchen, dining room, and lounge at its Cuddy Point shire base that serves the company’s five Harris sites. The accommodation will be placed next to a large storage shed on the site.

The Faroese-owned company told Western Isles local authority, Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, that a lack of homes had created difficulties for the company in recruiting and retaining staff.

Shift-based staff

“BFS (Bakkafrost Scotland) has a good reputation in the local community for providing good quality, highly paid and progressive jobs. In order to build and retain a skilled and competent workforce of the scale needed by the marine operations, it is necessary to provide temporary accommodation for shift-based staff, whilst permanent options are secured,” the company said in a written submission.

The units are to be made available to workers across the salmon producer’s Isle of Harris operations, the BBC reported.

The local authority said that while the proposal to site the temporary accommodation in a compound was “not ideal”, it had been justified in terms of the identified need.