Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh

Item 5 Appendix 3 24 April 2026 Page 1 of 3

Agenda item 5

Appendix 3

2025/0167/DET

Ini­tial Com­munity coun­cil comments

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Deirdre Straw

From: Kath­er­ine Don­nach­ie Sent: 01 April 2026 12:00 Sub­ject: n 2025/0167/DET Con­struc­tion of forestry extrac­tion track, track upgrad­ing at Land 465M NW of Golden Acre, Glen Road, Newtonmore

From: NVCC nvccsec@​gmail.​com Sent: Sunday, March 1, 2026 2:12 PM To: Kath­er­ine Don­nach­ie katherinedonnachie@​cairngorms.​co.​uk Sub­ject: Plan­ning Applic­a­tion 2025/0167/DET Con­struc­tion of forestry extrac­tion track, track upgrad­ing at Land 465M NW of Golden Acre, Glen Road, Newtonmore

Hi Kath­er­ine

I must apo­lo­gise but this has com­pletely slipped off my radar, and I was not even remem­ber­ing that the form­al pro­pos­al had been made.

How­ever, we are aware that a num­ber of res­id­ents are unhappy about this pro­pos­al and I assume that they have already registered with you their con­cerns about the route, which goes through an exist­ing sheep fank but also inter­feres with tra­di­tion­al crofters’ anim­als grazing.

Mem­bers had turned up at our Decem­ber and Feb­ru­ary NVCC meet­ings to make NVCC aware of their con­cerns, but none of them cited that the form­al applic­a­tion had been made. They men­tioned that the pro­posed route would mean that anim­als’ nor­mal graz­ing areas would be across the route from their croft­ing grounds and there­fore a lot of new fen­cing and anim­al man­age­ment would be needed as the sheep come to the crofters’ houses to be fed daily (in winter at least).

It seems there were ori­gin­ally three poten­tial haul routes being pro­posed by the estate, the first of which had been turned down pre­vi­ously. A second one, which was pre­ferred by the res­id­ents who spoke to us, would have placed the haul route roughly mid­way between the ori­gin­al and latest pro­pos­al, and would not have interfered (as much) with the crofter’s oper­a­tions. Part of their con­cern was also that the pro­posed route had already been largely determ­ined by the CNPA them­selves, without any con­sulta­tion with the crofters or con­sid­er­a­tion of the impact on tra­di­tion­al croft­ing methods.

I am not aware wheth­er the New­ton­more Wood­land and Com­munity Devel­op­ment Trust have raised any con­cerns, but the like­li­hood is that the pro­posed route would tend to divert people off the Wild­cat Trail, an import­ant loc­al tour­ist attrac­tion, as that path­way runs for some of its length along­side — but on the oth­er side of a fence — from the pro­posed route.

Look­ing through my records from the July (which was a busy time for me as I had oth­er issues on my plate at the time — and it would have coin­cided with our not hav­ing a NVCC meet­ing until Septem­ber 2025), I guess it com­pletely slipped off our radar that the applic­a­tion had even been sub­mit­ted. It cer­tainly nev­er struck me at the Decem­ber or Feb­ru­ary meetings

Has the determ­in­a­tion now been made, or is there still time for NVCC to make representations?

Regards Gra­ham

— Gra­ham Fraser Sec­ret­ary, New­ton­more & Vicin­ity Com­munity Council