Linburn Veterans Centre Update - June 2025

The Board and Executive team of Sight Scotland Veterans have recently taken the very difficult decision to sell land on our Linburn estate to safeguard the future of the charity and ensure we are able to provide services to visually impaired veterans for many years to come.

Sight Scotland Veterans exists to provide services to all veterans with sight loss across Scotland. We do this through our two centres in Linburn and Paisley as well as community based services across Scotland. Based on current budget and expenditures, it is expected that the charity will run out of funds by 2030/31. We are therefore urgently addressing our financial situation to ensure the long-term financial sustainability of the charity. This includes carefully reviewing our resources and making difficult decisions where necessary to preserve the essential services we provide, including safeguarding the Linburn Centre service for veterans with sight loss. We're looking at ways to ensure future viability by reducing operating costs and making best use of resources to continue our journey towards financial sustainability.

As part of our financial sustainability approach, we recently announced our intention to sell land near our Linburn Centre to a housing developer. Much of this land was identified for potential development in the West Lothian Development Plan many years ago. Although selling the land would secure the financial future of the charity, it would unfortunately mean that the existing housing on the site would need to be demolished. This would impact a total of 13 residential properties on the site, including seven veteran tenants with vision impairment and six private tenants, as well as three non-housing tenants (a military museum, a farmer, and a walled garden project). The housing was opened to private tenants due to a lack of demand from veterans with sight loss for this type of accommodation. There are seven vacant residential properties which were not filled due to their poor state of repair, which would have required significant investment that we simply could not afford. Our primary mission is to support veterans with sight loss living across Scotland.

We recognise that this decision will unfortunately impact current estate tenants, including veterans with vision impairment, and have extended the notice period to a full year. We wish to make it clear that no one faces immediate eviction. The charity is committed to working closely with each tenant to help them find suitable alternative accommodation and minimise disruption by offering personalised support through our Financial Wellbeing service. We informed the tenants of our long-term intentions at this stage; in order to start a conversation with each tenant to understand their specific needs so we can support them effectively.