Item11GrantownonSpeyConservationAreaManagmentPlanConsultation

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 11 10/03/2023

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

FOR DECISION

Title: GRANT­OWN-ON-SPEY CON­SER­VA­TION AREA MAN­AGE­MENT PLAN CON­SULTA­TION Pre­pared by: Dan Har­ris, Plan­ning Man­ager (For­ward Plan­ning and Ser­vice Improvement)

Pur­pose

1. To inform the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee of High­land Council’s con­sulta­tion on a Draft Grant­own-on-Spey Con­ser­va­tion Area Man­age­ment Plan and to agree the Cairngorm Nation­al Park Authority’s response to the consultation.

Recom­mend­a­tion

1. That the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee agree to officers sub­mit­ting the response to the con­sulta­tion out­lined in this report.

Back­ground

1. Con­ser­va­tion areas were first intro­duced by the Civic Amen­it­ies Act 1967 with the cur­rent legis­lat­ive frame­work provided by the Plan­ning (Lis­ted Build­ings and Con­ser­va­tion Areas) (Scot­land) Act 1997. The Act places a stat­utory duty on Loc­al Author­it­ies to identi­fy and des­ig­nate parts of their area which mer­it con­ser­va­tion area status by vir­tue of their ​“spe­cial archi­tec­tur­al or his­tor­ic interest”.

2. Con­ser­va­tion areas there­fore exist to man­age and pro­tect the spe­cial archi­tec­tur­al and his­tor­ic interest of a place — in oth­er words, the fea­tures that make it unique. Con­ser­va­tion area status brings the fol­low­ing works under plan­ning con­trol: a. Demoli­tion of unlis­ted build­ings or struc­tures. b. Remov­al of, or work to trees. c. Devel­op­ment involving house exten­sions, roof alter­a­tions, win­dows, stone clean­ing or paint­ing of the exter­i­or, satel­lite dishes, pro­vi­sion of hard sur­faces, the erec­tion or alter­a­tion of gates, fences and walls. d. Erec­tion of ancil­lary build­ings (such as sheds/​garages) and raised decking/​platforms.

3. Grant­own-on-Spey Con­ser­va­tion Area was ori­gin­ally des­ig­nated on March 4^th 1975 by Moray and Nairn Joint County Coun­cil. In 2018 – 19 a Con­ser­va­tion Area Apprais­al car­ried out, under­taken on behalf of The High­land Coun­cil, as a Grant­own 250 leg­acy pro­ject led by The Grant­own Soci­ety. The Apprais­al iden­ti­fied issues and recom­men­ded to enlar­ging bound­ary. The pur­pose of the Con­ser­va­tion Area

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 11 10/03/2023

1. Man­age­ment Plan is to address the find­ings of the Apprais­al and fur­ther con­sider the Con­ser­va­tion Area’s chal­lenges, threats and oppor­tun­it­ies. The con­sulta­tion on the Man­age­ment Plan is being run by The High­land Coun­cil, between 6^th of Feb­ru­ary to 19^th March 2023. A con­sulta­tion event was also held in Grantown’s Com­munity Centre Café on Feb­ru­ary 15^th.

Pro­posed CNPA Con­sulta­tion Response

1. The Nation­al Park Author­ity thank The High­land Coun­cil for the oppor­tun­ity to com­ment on the draft Grant­own-on-Spey Con­ser­va­tion Area Man­age­ment Plan which over­all is very wel­come. The Man­age­ment Plan will sup­port the use of Policy 9: Cul­tur­al Her­it­age in the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan (LDP) 2021, which states that ​“Devel­op­ments affect­ing a con­ser­va­tion area should be con­sist­ent with any rel­ev­ant con­ser­va­tion area apprais­al or man­age­ment plan.” The Park Author­ity is pleased that the Man­age­ment Plan spe­cific­ally ref­er­ences Policy 9 and the LDP in its intro­duc­tion, high­light­ing the rela­tion between the doc­u­ments. The Man­age­ment Plan also sup­ports the Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan’s (NPPP) 2022 Pri­or­ity C10. Cul­tur­al her­it­age, which aims to ​“Safe­guard and pro­mote the Park’s cul­tur­al her­it­age and provide oppor­tun­it­ies for every­one to exper­i­ence and learn about the Nation­al Park’s out­stand­ing his­tor­ic envir­on­ment, his­tory and cul­ture.” The NPPP is not ref­er­enced in the Man­age­ment Plan and so it is recom­men­ded that a ref­er­ence be added in Sec­tion 1.

2. The Park Author­ity agrees with the sum­mary of sig­ni­fic­ance and iden­ti­fic­a­tion of the char­ac­ter areas with­in the town. Fur­ther con­text may be gained from the Park Authority’s own work on land­scape char­ac­ter and includ­ing a ref­er­ence to this in Sec­tion 2.0 of the Man­age­ment Plan may be bene­fi­cial: https://​cairngorms​.co​.uk/​c​a​r​i​n​g​-​f​u​t​u​r​e​/​c​a​i​r​n​g​o​r​m​s​-​l​a​n​d​s​c​a​p​e​s​/​l​a​n​d​s​cape- areas/?grantown-on-spey

3. The Park Author­ity agrees that lack of repair, loss of ori­gin­al archi­tec­tur­al detail, the use of inap­pro­pri­ate mater­i­als, inap­pro­pri­ate and unsym­path­et­ic alter­a­tions and exten­sions are a chal­lenge with­in the con­ser­va­tion area. It notes that many of the meas­ures to address these fall out­side the plan­ning sys­tem and would wel­come fur­ther prac­tic­al guid­ance or examples of best prac­tice on how to encour­age or imple­ment them.

4. The Park Author­ity wel­comes the prom­in­ence giv­en to the pub­lic realm and its man­age­ment with­in the Man­age­ment Plan. This sup­ports a num­ber of pri­or­it­ies of the NPPP’s, includ­ing B9. Men­tal and phys­ic­al health, C4. Vil­lage and town centres, C6. A sus­tain­able des­tin­a­tion, C7. Trans­port to and around the Park, C8. Access­ible path and cycle net­work, C9. High-qual­ity vis­it­or exper­i­ence and C10. Cul­tur­al heritage.

5. The Park Author­ity sup­port the iden­ti­fic­a­tion of dif­fer­ent man­age­ment approaches to dif­fer­ent areas of the Con­ser­va­tion area. In par­tic­u­lar, the more per­missive approach to the alter­a­tion and adapt­a­tion of build­ings with­in the more mod­ern parts of the Con­ser­va­tion Areas is welcomed.

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 11 10/03/2023

1. While the Park Author­ity agree that the adapt­a­tion of build­ings and install­a­tion of micro renew­ables rep­res­ents a par­tic­u­lar chal­lenge in the Con­ser­va­tion Area, it finds the sug­ges­ted means of man­age­ment, as out­lined in para­graphs 5.6 to 5.7, either lack­ing in detail or too restrict­ive. The para­graphs and the guid­ance they dir­ect the read­er to could be in con­flict with Nation­al Plan­ning Frame­work 4 (NPF4), in par­tic­u­lar Policy I which states that ​“When con­sid­er­ing all devel­op­ment pro­pos­als sig­ni­fic­ant weight will be giv­en to the glob­al cli­mate and nature crises”.

2. Fur­ther areas of con­flict arise from: a. Policy 2, which states that ​“Devel­op­ment pro­pos­als to ret­ro­fit meas­ures to exist­ing devel­op­ments that reduce emis­sions or sup­port adapt­a­tion to cli­mate change will be sup­por­ted”. b. Policy 11, which states that ​“Devel­op­ment pro­pos­als for all forms of renew­able, low-car­bon and zero emis­sions tech­no­lo­gies will be sup­por­ted”. c. Policy 19, which aims ​“to encour­age, pro­mote and facil­it­ate devel­op­ment that sup­ports decar­bon­ised solu­tions to heat and cool­ing demand and ensure adapt­a­tion to more extreme tem­per­at­ures” and states that ​“devel­op­ment pro­pos­als for build­ings that will be occu­pied by people will be sup­por­ted where they are designed to pro­mote sus­tain­able tem­per­at­ure man­age­ment, for example by pri­or­it­ising nat­ur­al or pass­ive solu­tions such as sit­ing, ori­ent­a­tion, and materials.”

3. It is acknow­ledged that NPF4’s Policy 7 states that ​“devel­op­ment pro­pos­als in or affect­ing con­ser­va­tion areas will only be sup­por­ted where the char­ac­ter and appear­ance of the con­ser­va­tion area and its set­ting is pre­served or enhanced”. How­ever, as stated in the let­ter, dated Feb­ru­ary 8^th 2023, from the Chief Plan­ner and Min­is­ter for Pub­lic Fin­ance, Plan­ning and Com­munity Wealth on the trans­ition­al arrange­ments for Nation­al Plan­ning Frame­work 4, Policy I, ​“pri­or­it­ises the cli­mate and nature crises in all decisions”.

4. The Park Author­ity is of the view that the adapt­a­tion of build­ings, to both reduce their car­bon foot­print and address the effects of the chan­ging cli­mate is of great import­ance and espe­cially so in Con­ser­va­tion Areas, where many build­ings are of an age and con­struc­tion that means they are chal­len­ging in terms of con­straints and cost to adapt. There is a risk that a restrict­ive approach to the adapt­a­tion of his­tor­ic build­ings with­in the Con­ser­va­tion Area will lead to them becom­ing unaf­ford­able to run and unus­able for a range of pur­poses, includ­ing domest­ic, com­mer­cial and com­munity uses, thus lead­ing to fur­ther issues of main­ten­ance and neg­lect. We would prefer that the man­age­ment plan iden­ti­fied how changes can be made at the same time as pre­serving the over­all char­ac­ter of the Con­ser­va­tion Area and recom­mend that para­graphs 5.6 to 5.7 are re-draf­ted to be more sup­port­ive of the adapt­a­tion of build­ings for cli­mate resi­li­ence, energy effi­ciency and the install­a­tion of micro renewables.

5. Para­graphs 5.6 to 5.7 con­tain a num­ber of links to His­tor­ic Envir­on­ment Scot­land (HES) doc­u­ments, all of which pre-date the pub­lic­a­tion of NPF. The Park Author­ity there­fore recom­mends that the com­pli­ance of these doc­u­ments with NPF4 be checked before pub­lish­ing a final draft.

6. The Park Author­ity note the inclu­sion of poten­tial devel­op­ment sites with­in the Man­age­ment Plan. It should be noted that the iden­ti­fic­a­tion of a site with­in the

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 11 10/03/2023

Man­age­ment Plan does not bestow any weight upon any devel­op­ment pro­pos­als on these sites and that pro­pos­als will be determ­ined in accord­ance with the policies of NPF4 and the Cairngorms Nation­al Park LDP.

1. The Park Author­ity wel­comes any fur­ther con­sulta­tion with the High­land Coun­cil on the Man­age­ment Plan and is happy to provide fur­ther inform­a­tion or cla­ri­fic­a­tion if necessary.

Next Steps

1. Το sub­mit the con­sulta­tion response to the High­land Coun­cil before March 19^th.

Dan Har­ris danharris@​cairngorms.​co.​uk

Draft Grant­own-on-Spey Con­ser­va­tion Area Man­age­ment Plan: https://​con​sult​.high​land​.gov​.uk/​r​e​s​o​u​r​c​e​s​/​p​o​r​t​a​l​/​s​u​p​p​o​r​t​i​n​g​f​i​l​e​s​/​7​75558 Nation­al Plan­ning Frame­work 4: https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/strategy- plan/2023/02/n­a­tion­al-plan­ning-frame­work‑4/­doc­u­ment­s/n­a­tion­al-plan­ning-frame­work-4- revised-draft/national-planning-framework-4-revised-draft/govscot%3Adocument/national- planning-framework-4-revised-draft.pdf