Item5AABallaterOldSchool 2019/0003/DETand 2019/0006/LBC

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 5 26/04/19

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

DEVEL­OP­MENT PRO­POSED: Con­ver­sion of School to 10 Dwell­ing­houses, Rein­state­ment of School­houses to form 2 Dwell­ing­houses, Erec­tion of I Dwell­ing­house and II Flats (Afford­able Houses), Form­a­tion of Car Park, Access and Alter­a­tions to Bound­ary Walls at Bal­later Old School, Abergel­die Road, Bal­later, Aber­deen­shire, AB35 5RR

REF­ER­ENCE: 2019/0003/DET and 2019/0006/LBC

APPLIC­ANT: Grampi­an Hous­ing Association

DATE CALLED-IN: 7 Janu­ary 2019

RECOM­MEND­A­TION: Approve Full Plan­ning Per­mis­sion and Lis­ted Build­ing Con­sent sub­ject to Conditions

CASE OFFICER: Kath­er­ine Don­nach­ie Plan­ning Officer

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 5 26/04/19

CNPA Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Applic­a­tion Site

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 5 26/04/19

SITE DESCRIP­TION, PRO­POS­AL AND HISTORY

Site Descrip­tion

1. The applic­a­tion site is Bal­later Old School, school­houses and school yard loc­ated with­in Bal­later bounded to the south by Abergel­die Road and to the north by School Lane. The build­ings include a sub­stan­tial former school build­ing dat­ing from 1877 with two school­houses formerly hous­ing the head­mas­ter and head­mis­tress on either site of the main entrance. These gran­ite and slate build­ings face Abergel­die Road, Bal­later off which ped­es­tri­an access is cur­rently taken via open­ings in the cas­tel­lated wall that runs along the site front­age to Abergel­die Road. The build­ings are set back from the road, with mature trees along the site front­age, around the build­ings and between the build­ings and the prop­er­ties to the west and east.

2. The com­plex includes rear classroom wings to the north and a con­nect­ing more recent addi­tion with­in the cent­ral court­yard area. There is a fur­ther piended roof school build­ing front­ing School Lane togeth­er with a num­ber of ancil­lary toi­let and shel­ter build­ings behind a high stone wall which bounds the site along this front­age. There are two exist­ing vehicu­lar access points onto School Lane with gate pil­lars and these accesses lead into the former play­ground and yard areas.

3. The site is bounded on the west and east sides by stone walls. Res­id­en­tial prop­er­ties are loc­ated on either side of the site on both the Abergel­die Road and School Road front­ages. The Queen’s Bar­racks lie fur­ther west and there are park­ing restric­tions in place in the sur­round­ing roads when the bar­racks are occu­pied dur­ing August to October.

4. The rela­tion­ship of the site to the sur­round­ing area is shown on the loc­a­tion plan included in Appendix Ib- Plans.

5. Bal­later School and asso­ci­ated build­ings, includ­ing bound­ary walls, is a cat­egory C(S) lis­ted build­ing of archi­tec­tur­al and his­tor­ic import­ance. They are described as a good example of a post 1872 Edu­ca­tion Act school with more rarely seen two school­houses and unusu­al goth­ic detailed classroom, with the dis­tinct­ive ped­i­men­ted gable­heads of the school provid­ing an inter­est­ing and pos­it­ive con­tri­bu­tion to the loc­al streets­cape, present­ing a par­tic­u­larly strik­ing façade to the south.

6. The school is cur­rently vacant and the list­ing descrip­tion notes that it was last used as a school in the 1960s when the new school in Bal­later was built. It was used as an out­door centre, but this use stopped in the 1990s and the build­ing has been unused since. It is on the Build­ings at Risk Register.

7. There are a num­ber of mature trees and shrubs with­in the site, mostly in the south­ern part facing Abergel­die Road.

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 5 26/04/19

Pro­pos­al

1. The draw­ings and doc­u­ments asso­ci­ated with this applic­a­tion are lis­ted below and are avail­able on the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity web­site unless noted oth­er­wise: http://​www​.eplan​ningcnpa​.co​.uk/​o​n​l​i​n​e​-​a​p​p​l​i​c​a​t​i​o​n​s​/​a​p​p​l​i​c​a​t​i​o​n​D​e​t​a​i​l​s​.​d​o​?​a​c​t​i​v​e​T​a​b​=​s​u​m​m​a​r​y​&​k​e​y​V​a​l​=​P​K​Y​K​I​N​S​I​0CH00

Title	Draw­ing Num­ber	Date on Plan*	Date Received
Com­par­is­on Plans
Loc­a­tion Plan	001	Dec 15
Exist­ing Floor Plans	002 Rev B	21/02/17
Exist­ing elevations/​sections I	004 Rev A	21/02/17
Exist­ing elevations/​sections 2	005 Rev A	21/02/17
Pro­posed Hous­ing Units	025 Rev A	31/12/19
Pro­posed Ground/​Site Plan	020 Rev G	20/12/19
Pro­posed First Floor Plan	021 Rev B	08/02/19
Pro­posed Roof/​Site Plan	022 Rev A	08/02/19
Pro­posed Elevations/​Sections I	023 Rev A	20/02/19
Pro­posed Elevations/​Sections 2	024	Dec 18
Pro­posed Hous­ing Units	25 Rev B	30/01/19
Bound­ary details	028	April 2018
Pre­lim­in­ary sur­faces layout	103 Revi­sion F	02/04/19
Replace­ment win­dow details	029	April 2019
Bike Store details	430	April 2019
Access and Park­ing Statement
(extract design statement)
Addi­tion­al Roads information			02/05/19
sub­mis­sion
Site sur­vey level plan	T‑01	05/11/16
Visu­al­isa­tion – aer­i­al view	-	June 18
Addi­tion­al site visualisations			20/02/19
Design State­ment by Ian Rodger	Revi­sion B	20/02/19
Archi­tects
Heath­er Dale Land­scape Design
Land­scape Report
Heath­er Dale Land­scape Design
Land­scape Plan
Tree Sur­vey Report by Struan		Feb 2019
Dalgleish
Tree Sur­vey Schedule		Feb 2019
Arbor­i­cul­tur­al Impact Assessment
and Tree Pro­tec­tion Plan
Bat Sur­vey Report		June 2017
Bat Spe­cies Pro­tec­tion Plan		Feb 2018

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 5 26/04/19

Title	Draw­ing Num­ber	Date on Plan*	Date Received
Swift Spe­cies Pro­tec­tion Plan		Feb 2018
Tim­ber Sur­vey Let­ter and Report		Feb & April 2017
Ground Invest­ig­a­tion Report by		21/04/17
Green­cat Renewables
Asbes­tos Report by Environtech	J346282	Nov 2016
Sil­ver energy level for buildings
state­ment
Pro­posed Demolition	017 Rev B	15/02/19
Swept path plans van and refuse	104 Rev B	01/04/19
Swept path cars	100 Rev H	01/04/19
Con­struc­tion Meth­od Statement	21118 – 01	05/02/19
Site set up plan
Drain­age Impact Assessment	C2522 Revi­sion D	13/02/19
Pre­lim­in­ary Drain­age Layout	101 Rev F	13/02/19
Pre­lim­in­ary drain­age details	103 Rev G	02/04/19
Com­mun­al Bin Store	026	21/12/18
Copy of SNH bat license

• Where no spe­cif­ic day of month has been provided on the plan, the sys­tem defaults to the 1^st of the month.

1. By way of back­ground, some mem­bers may recall a pre­vi­ous applic­a­tion for devel­op­ment of 26 res­id­en­tial units on this site, tak­ing access off School Lane This is covered in the plan­ning his­tory sec­tion later. Fol­low­ing refus­al of this applic­a­tion by the CNPA Plan­ning Com­mit­tee, the applic­ants lodged a suc­cess­ful appeal to the Dir­ect­or­ate of Plan­ning and Envir­on­ment­al Appeals (DPEA). The cur­rent applic­a­tion seeks to address the reas­ons for refus­al of the ori­gin­al applic­a­tion. A plan show­ing the cur­rent pro­posed lay­out com­pared to that pre­vi­ously pro­posed is attached as Appendix I (a) – Com­par­is­on Layout.

2. The cur­rent pro­pos­als seek full plan­ning per­mis­sion and lis­ted build­ing con­sent for the con­ver­sion and renov­a­tion of the exist­ing build­ings and erec­tion of new build­ings with­in the site to provide a total of 24 res­id­en­tial units. All units will be social ren­ted hous­ing provided by Grampi­an Hous­ing Asso­ci­ation. Both applic­a­tions are covered in this single report.

3. The pro­pos­als can be sum­mar­ised as fol­lows: a) Con­ver­sion of the former school build­ing to ten res­id­en­tial units using the exist­ing form of the build­ings and open­ings; b) Renov­a­tion of the school­houses to two houses and remov­al of more recent gable end wing to side of west­ern­most school­house; c) Erec­tion of single storey two bed­room house in south west corner of site facing Abergel­die Road; d) Erec­tion of ¹⁄₂ storey block of three flats in north west corner, two on ground floor one on upper floor, facing School Lane; and e) Erec­tion of 13 storey block of eight flats in north east corner of site facing School Lane.

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 5 26/04/19

1. The mix of hous­ing com­prises four­teen two bed­room prop­er­ties, eight one bed­room prop­er­ties, one three bed­room prop­erty and one four bed­room prop­erty. Plans of the pro­pos­als are attached in Appendix Ib- Plans and these include mass­ing images to illus­trate how the devel­op­ment may appear in the loc­al streets­cape. The exist­ing gran­ite and slate fin­ishes of the exist­ing build­ings will be retained as part of the con­ver­sion works and all new win­dows con­struc­ted to match exist­ing fen­es­tra­tion. The new build pro­pos­als will be fin­ished in a mix­ture of harled/​timber walls and slate roofs. Demoli­tion of exist­ing out­build­ings on the site is pro­posed togeth­er with a con­nect­ing build­ing of more mod­ern con­struc­tion with­in the demoli­tion of the cent­ral court­yard with­in the school complex.

2. Vehicu­lar access is to be taken from Abergel­die Road Lane via a new open­ing to be formed in the exist­ing lis­ted wall along­side the pub­lic road in the south east corner of the site. It is also pro­posed to provide ker­bed build outs at the junc­tion point. Con­struc­tion vehicles will use this access point too.

3. The two exist­ing access points onto School Lane will be nar­rowed and retained for ped­es­tri­an access, and paths are pro­posed with­in the site to enable all res­id­ents to access units from both School Lane and Abergel­die Road.

4. The new vehicu­lar access from Abergel­die Road will serve a single pro­posed park­ing area with­in the site accom­mod­at­ing a total of 28 spaces includ­ing 2 dis­abled spaces and 3 vis­it­or park­ing spaces. The park­ing area will be broken up visu­ally by reten­tion of an exist­ing large tree with­in the site and adja­cent to the bound­ary of the house to the imme­di­ate east, togeth­er with pro­posed cel­lu­lar tree plant­ing for SUDS pur­poses. On street park­ing on Abergel­die Road will con­tin­ue to be used to serve the former school houses as was the exist­ing prac­tise togeth­er with vis­it­or park­ing spaces here. The applic­ants have con­firmed that park­ing spaces will not be alloc­ated to indi­vidu­al units, but will be com­mun­al and avail­able for all res­id­ents to use. The park­ing areas will be fin­ished in per­meable pav­ing defined by nat­ur­al pav­ing blocks. Con­struc­tion traffic will access the site from Abergel­die Road too, with the con­struc­tion meth­od state­ment detail­ing how this will be undertaken.

5. Exist­ing stone bound­ary walls will be lowered and rebuilt with prop­er found­a­tions along School Lane and exist­ing bound­ary walls retained on the west and east site bound­ar­ies. Low level fen­cing and hedging is pro­posed to define those prop­er­ties which have indi­vidu­al gar­dens front­ing Abergel­die Road. All oth­er open space will be com­mun­al, and will include a large com­mun­al green space in the north-west corner of the site as shown on the land­scape plan with­in Appendix I(b) — Plans. It is pro­posed to retain sig­ni­fic­ant trees front­ing Abergel­die Road and also between the devel­op­ment and the houses on either side. New land­scap­ing is pro­posed to com­pensate for tree loss, togeth­er with pro­tec­tion for those trees being retained.

6. Bike stor­age for twenty bikes is pro­posed in the north part of the site on part of the ori­gin­al west­ern­most access here, where it is being nar­rowed to facil­it­ate ped­es­tri­an access from School Lane. This bike stor­age will serve the whole site via the vari­ous paths pro­posed with­in the site and will be provided with­in a lean too roofed tim­ber clad structure.

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 5 26/04/19

1. Sim­il­arly com­mun­al bin stor­age is pro­posed on the Abergel­die Road front­age with­in tim­ber lined curved roof covered enclos­ures as shown in Appendix I (b) — Plans. These will be loc­ated set back from, but with­in 10 metres of, Abergel­die Road where refuse vehicles are able to pick up waste. The bin stor­age will be main­tained by the applic­ants who will also ensure that con­nect­ing paths are kept free from ice and snow.

2. It is pro­posed to con­nect to pub­lic sew­ers and water sup­plies. Sur­face water is to be dealt with by a SUDS sys­tem com­pris­ing per­meable sur­fa­cing (por­ous pav­ing car park) and atten­u­ation. This scheme includes pro­vi­sion for infilt­ra­tion soakaway, plus three cel­lu­lar tree sys­tems to allow for some sur­face water to be removed by tree roots before infilt­ra­tion into the site sub­soils. The sys­tem will be main­tained by the developer.

3. In terms of energy pro­vi­sion, the poten­tial for ground source heat­ing is being con­sidered and it is pro­posed to build the prop­er­ties to the ​“sil­ver” stand­ard of sus­tain­ab­il­ity which involves tar­gets relat­ing to issues such as water usage, home work­ing pro­vi­sion, real time elec­tri­city usage mon­it­or­ing and intern­al recyc­ling space.

4. Although this is not a major plan­ning applic­a­tion as defined in the Scot­tish Government’s hier­archy of devel­op­ment the applic­ants car­ried out some pub­lic engage­ment dur­ing the con­sid­er­a­tion of the applic­a­tions, includ­ing dis­plays in the archi­tects’ office in Bal­later and pub­lic inform­a­tion event.

5. A num­ber of sup­port­ing doc­u­ments have been sub­mit­ted with the applic­a­tions includ­ing: a) Design State­ment; b) Tree Sur­vey Report, arbor­i­cul­tur­al impact assess­ment and tree pro­tec­tion plan; c) Tim­ber Sur­vey; d) Asbes­tos Report; e) Drain­age Impact Assess­ment; f) Land­scape Report and plan; g) Bat Sur­vey and Spe­cies Pro­tec­tion Plan; h) Con­struc­tion Meth­od State­ment i) Swift Spe­cies Pro­tec­tion Plan; j) Swept path ana­lys­is draw­ings; and k) Mass­ing visualisations.

His­tory

1. Applic­a­tions for full plan­ning per­mis­sion and lis­ted build­ing con­sent for the erec­tion of 26 afford­able houses were refused, con­trary to officer recom­mend­a­tion, at the May 2018 meet­ing of the CNPA Plan­ning Com­mit­tee. Ref­er­ence 2017/0284/DET and 2017/0285/LBC. The com­mit­tee also held a site vis­it to inspect the site pri­or to determ­in­ing the applications.

2. The reas­ons for refus­al were as fol­lows: a) ​“The pro­posed devel­op­ment is con­trary to Policy 3 Sus­tain­able Design of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2015. Spe­cific­ally, under Policy 3.1 (b), (g), (i) and (j) the pro­pos­al is not sym­path­et­ic to the tra­di­tion­al pat­tern and char­ac­ter of the sur­round­ing area and does not pro­tect the amen­ity enjoyed by

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 5 26/04/19

neigh­bours due to (1) inad­equate car park­ing facil­it­ies, (2) poor domest­ic amen­ity par­tic­u­larly in rela­tion to flat­ted accom­mod­a­tion, (3) lack of recre­ation­al space, espe­cially for chil­dren; (4) ped­es­tri­an and road safety issues arising from the access arrange­ments to and from the site at School Lane and the need for res­id­ents to cross car park­ing spaces to reach com­mun­al spaces with­in the devel­op­ment. As a res­ult of these con­straints the pro­posed devel­op­ment cre­ates over devel­op­ment and access issues on School Lane.”

1. The pro­posed site lay­out at that time is shown in Appendix I (a)- Com­par­is­on Plans.

2. Fol­low­ing this decision the applic­ants appealed to the Dir­ect­or­ate of Plan­ning and Envir­on­ment­al Appeals. Their appeal was upheld and plan­ning and lis­ted build­ing con­sent was gran­ted. A copy of the appeal decision let­ters is attached as Appendix 2.

3. Hav­ing con­sidered the situ­ation fur­ther the applic­ants decided to sub­mit a revised plan­ning applic­a­tion to try and address the con­cerns of the CNPA Plan­ning Com­mit­tee and object­ors to the ori­gin­al sub­mis­sion and under­took pre applic­a­tion dis­cus­sions with the CNPA Plan­ning Ser­vice and Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil, and the loc­al Com­munity Council.

DEVEL­OP­MENT PLAN CONTEXT

Policies

Nation­al Policy	Scot­tish Plan­ning Policy 2014
Stra­tegic Policy	Cairngorms Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan 2017 — 2022
Loc­al Plan Policy	Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan (2015)
	Those policies rel­ev­ant to the assess­ment of this applic­a­tion are marked with a cross
POLICY I	NEW HOUS­ING DEVELOPMENT	X
POLICY 2	SUP­PORT­ING ECO­NOM­IC GROWTH
POLICY 3	SUS­TAIN­ABLE DESIGN	X
POLICY 4	NAT­UR­AL HERITAGE	X
POLICY 5	LAND­SCAPE	X
POLICY 6	THE SIT­ING AND DESIGN OF DIGIT­AL COM­MU­NIC­A­TIONS EQUIPMENT
POLICY 7	RENEW­ABLE ENERGY
POLICY 8	SPORT AND RECREATION
POLICY 9	CUL­TUR­AL HERITAGE	X
POLICY 10	RESOURCES	X
POLICY 11	DEVELOPER CON­TRI­BU­TIONS	X

1. All new devel­op­ment pro­pos­als require to be assessed in rela­tion to policies con­tained in the adop­ted Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan. The full word­ing of policies can be found at: http://​cairngorms​.co​.uk/​u​p​l​o​a​d​s​/​d​o​c​u​m​e​n​t​s​/Park Authority/Planning/LDP15.pdf

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 5 26/04/19

1. The applic­a­tion site lies with­in the set­tle­ment bound­ary of Bal­later as defined in the adop­ted Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan. The site is spe­cific­ally des­ig­nated on the Bal­later Set­tle­ment Plan as CI – Com­munity with the set­tle­ment state­ment stat­ing that the site of the old school presents an oppor­tun­ity for invest­ment in the heart of the vil­lage. It fur­ther notes that, lis­ted and with­in the con­ser­va­tion area, redevel­op­ment will be chal­len­ging, and any new devel­op­ment pro­pos­als must bene­fit the com­munity in some way. It is noted that this may include afford­able hous­ing, open mar­ket hous­ing, mixed use includ­ing employ­ment pro­vi­sion, recre­ation and tour­ism development.

2. The CNPA is cur­rently con­sid­er­ing responses to the Pro­posed Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2020. The pro­posed Plan has no addi­tion­al mater­i­al­ity with regard to decision mak­ing for this cur­rent application.

Plan­ning Guidance

1. Sup­ple­ment­ary guid­ance also forms part of the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan and provides more details about how to com­ply with the policies. Guid­ance that is rel­ev­ant to this applic­a­tion is marked with a cross.

Policy I	New Hous­ing Devel­op­ment Non-Stat­utory Guid­ance	X
Policy 2	Sup­port­ing Eco­nom­ic Growth Non-Stat­utory Guidance
Policy 3	Sus­tain­able Design Non-Stat­utory Guidance	X
Policy 4	Nat­ur­al Her­it­age Sup­ple­ment­ary Guidance	X
Policy 5	Land­scape Non-Stat­utory Guidance	X
Policy 7	Renew­able Energy Sup­ple­ment­ary Guidance
Policy 8	Sport and Recre­ation Non-Stat­utory Guidance
Policy 9	Cul­tur­al Her­it­age Non-Stat­utory Guidance	X
Policy 10	Resources Non-Stat­utory Guidance	X
Policy 11	Developer Con­tri­bu­tions Sup­ple­ment­ary Guidance	X

CON­SULTA­TIONS

Sum­mary of the Main Issues Raised by Consultees

1. Scot­tish Water has no objec­tion to the applic­a­tion not­ing that there is cur­rently suf­fi­cient capa­city in the Bal­later water treat­ment works. In order to con­firm capa­city in the waste water treat­ment works they would require the developer to sub­mit a pre devel­op­ment enquiry form. They also advise that the agency is unable to reserve capa­city and the applic­ant would require to sub­mit a form­al con­nec­tion applic­a­tion after per­mis­sion has been gran­ted, and they will review capa­city at that time. With regard to sur­face water they advise that con­nec­tions into the com­bined sew­er will not be accepted.

2. Aber­deen­shire Council’s Hous­ing Ser­vice sup­ports the applic­a­tion, not­ing that the pro­pos­al involves all units being for social rent which will go some way to meet­ing hous­ing needs with­in the Bal­later area. They also note that the ground floor accom­mod­a­tion of the 1, 2 and 4 bed prop­er­ties with ground floor bed­room and

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 5 26/04/19

bath­room may assist in meet­ing the hous­ing needs of house­holds with par­tic­u­lar needs. They also note that the pro­pos­als meet hous­ing need as iden­ti­fied by Aber­deen­shire Council’s 2019 wait­ing list and the 2017 Hous­ing Need and Demand Assess­ment. They fur­ther advise that the developer should keep in con­tact with the Hous­ing Ser­vice to dis­cuss and agree the pro­vi­sion and deliv­ery of afford­able housing.

1. Aber­deen­shire Coun­cils Developer Oblig­a­tions Officer does not con­sider there is any require­ment for developer con­tri­bu­tions in this case not­ing that there is suf­fi­cient capa­city with­in the exist­ing schools to ser­vice the site. Sim­il­arly there are not con­sidered to be any impacts which would require oth­er com­munity facil­it­ies or ser­vices to be improved or increased.

2. Aber­deen­shire Council’s Envir­on­ment­al Health Team has no objections.

3. Aber­deen­shire Council’s Envir­on­ment Plan­ner was con­sul­ted in rela­tion to the Lis­ted Build­ing Applic­a­tion. The officer notes that stand out ele­ments of the exist­ing build­ings are the very dom­in­ant Abergel­die Road front­age with asso­ci­ated garden group, the sol­id and dis­tinct bound­ary wall treat­ments and the com­mun­al and cohes­ive nature of the site, with the old school room and its impress­ive goth­ic win­dow and bell cot adding to the interest and sig­ni­fic­ance of the group­ing. It is also noted that the site has been vacant and under­u­til­ised for a sig­ni­fic­ant peri­od of time so it is wel­comed that a scheme has come for­ward which looks to incor­por­ate the exist­ing buildings.

4. Ini­tial con­cerns at the time of the pre­vi­ous applic­a­tion regard­ing dens­ity were addressed by the applicant’s jus­ti­fic­a­tion for the num­ber of units whilst the cur­rent pro­pos­als have fur­ther reduced the num­ber of units and has com­pletely removed the Abergel­die facing devel­op­ment in the east­ern part of the site which is con­sidered to be a really pos­it­ive step which helps to retain the prom­in­ence of the front­age to Abergel­die Road. This also in some ways mit­ig­ates the loss of wall sec­tion here which is a more neg­at­ive aspect of the cur­rent pro­pos­als. On bal­ance it is con­sidered that the reten­tion of trees, con­ser­va­tion of exist­ing wall and reduc­tion in the scale of the devel­op­ment in this corner of the site helps mit­ig­ate any neg­at­ive impact.

5. The choice of mater­i­als palette is appro­pri­ate with the use of tim­ber as opposed to new gran­ite wel­comed as this will allow the new build­ings to have a more ancil­lary feel and not com­pete with the main school. The use of a vari­ety of hard sur­faces is also wel­comed togeth­er with low key, visu­ally per­meable bound­ary enclosures.

6. Finally, the officer con­siders that the land­scap­ing of the site is well con­sidered with the reten­tion of green space along Abergel­die Road a pos­it­ive ele­ment with addi­tion­al tree plant­ing true to the his­tor­ic use of this part of the site. Vari­ety in hard sur­faces is wel­comed as is the com­mun­al feel provided by keep­ing bound­ary enclos­ures low and visu­ally permeable.

7. The officer con­siders that fur­ther detail will require to be agreed on mat­ters such as repair and main­ten­ance work required to the main build­ing; samples of fin­ishes and

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 5 26/04/19

sample of harling; bound­ary walls; details on intern­al fin­ishes and any remain­ing dec­or­at­ive scheme; and details of win­dows. The pro­posed devel­op­ment is con­sidered to be accept­able on this basis.

1. Aber­deen­shire Council’s Roads Devel­op­ment Ser­vice ori­gin­ally sought fur­ther cla­ri­fic­a­tion on park­ing and access vis­ib­il­ity issues. Fur­ther inform­a­tion cla­ri­fy­ing the on street park­ing, swept paths and dimen­sioned site plan was duly provided by the applicants.

2. The Ser­vice advises that park­ing pro­vi­sion is pro­posed based upon hous­ing asso­ci­ation park­ing which is no longer con­sidered dif­fer­ently from oth­er park­ing pro­vi­sion in Aber­deen­shire. How­ever giv­en the his­tory of the site the pre­vi­ously agreed park­ing require­ments will be hon­oured in this case. They note that dis­abled and vis­it­or park­ing has been accoun­ted for with­in the park­ing cal­cu­la­tion, but that dis­abled car park­ing spaces and their access zones need to be delin­eated on plan.

3. They also note that exist­ing on street park­ing arrange­ments for two of the prop­er­ties will remain, and that half of the vis­it­or park­ing will be on Abergel­die Road. They high­light that the applic­ants should be reminded that there is a park­ing restric­tion in place for Abergel­die Road in the sum­mer months when the Roy­al Guard is res­id­ent at the Bar­racks. The Ser­vice also note that the car park­ing pro­vi­sion will be on an unal­loc­ated basis.

4. They require fur­ther inform­a­tion on the detail of the lay­out to show the build outs on Abergel­die Road with a half bat­ter road kerb in order to provide an upstand to the kerbs, and also that the dis­abled car park­ing access areas be delin­eated on plan. These points have been addressed in revised plans and at the time of writ­ing the final com­ments of the Roads Ser­vice on these details are awaited.

5. Aber­deen­shire Council’s Waste Man­age­ment Ser­vice has no objec­tions sub­ject to the lay­out being designed to the sat­is­fac­tion of the Roads Service.

6. Aber­deen­shire Council’s Flood Risk and Coastal Pro­tec­tion Team advise that the area does not lie with­in an area iden­ti­fied as hav­ing a prob­ab­il­ity of flood­ing equal or great­er than 0.5% (i.e. I in 200 years) nor are they aware of any pre­vi­ous flood­ing on the site. Con­sequently, they are sat­is­fied with the level of flood risk. The Team ini­tially asked for an updated drain­age impact assess­ment to reflect the cur­rent lay­out. On receipt of this inform­a­tion they advised that they had no fur­ther com­ments to make.

7. Aber­deen­shire Council’s Edu­ca­tion and Children’s Ser­vice advised with the pre­vi­ous applic­a­tion that Bal­later Primary School and Aboyne Academy have capa­city for pupils gen­er­ated by the development.

8. Aber­deen­shire Council’s Archae­ology Team ori­gin­ally reques­ted a con­di­tion be attached to the pre­vi­ous plan­ning applic­a­tions requir­ing an archae­olo­gic­al stand­ing build­ing sur­vey to be provided for inclu­sion in the Nation­al Record of the His­tor­ic Envir­on­ment and in the loc­al sites and monu­ments record. This inform­a­tion has now been provided to the Team with the pre­vi­ously approved applications.

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 5 26/04/19

1. Aber­deen­shire Council’s Sci­entif­ic Officer was con­sul­ted in rela­tion to con­tam­in­ated land issues on the ori­gin­al applic­a­tion. The Officer advised at that time that there was no indic­a­tion from their records or the site invest­ig­a­tion report that there is likely to be con­tam­in­a­tion present so no fur­ther inform­a­tion was required. It was how­ever noted that fuel stor­age tanks and asbes­tos con­tain­ing mater­i­als are present on site and that this should be high­lighted to the applic­ants by way of inform­a­tion notes as to pro­ced­ures to be followed.

2. CNPA Con­ser­va­tion Man­ager and Con­ser­va­tion Officer have com­men­ted on land­scape and eco­logy issues not­ing that this is a resub­mis­sion of a pre­vi­ous applic­a­tion with the changes in sum­mary being to remove two semi-detached units from the south east­ern corner and pos­i­tion all of the car park­ing here with access now taken from Abergel­die Road and a lar­ger green space provided in the west­ern side of the site. The officer has sum­mar­ised the key changes and impacts as fol­lows: a) Remov­al of hous­ing units reduces the visu­al and land­scape effects on Abergel­die Road and retains clear­er views to the sur­round­ing hill, a key fea­ture of the area. It also retains unhindered the strong rela­tion­ship between the old school build­ing and oth­er exist­ing houses. b) Put­ting the car park in one area sim­pli­fies the lay­out, but most sig­ni­fic­antly allows for a cohes­ive open space on the site that is safe for use by res­id­ents, in par­tic­u­lar chil­dren who will bene­fit from pass­ive super­vi­sion from the sur­round­ing houses and will be sep­ar­ated from site traffic. c) Access from Abergel­die Road will remove a sec­tion of an exist­ing stone wall which is an import­ant land­scape fea­ture. The design state­ment has high­lighted that this will be mod­i­fied using ori­gin­al mater­i­als and to match exist­ing design and a detail for this should be provided (Note: fur­ther detail on the bound­ary wall has now been provided). d) Full plant­ing plan will be required although the indic­at­ive plan will only require minor modification.

3. The Officer con­siders that these changes make a sig­ni­fic­ant improve­ment to the land­scape and visu­al aspects of the devel­op­ment thus redu­cing any adverse effects on land­scape and visu­al aspects. It is recom­men­ded that con­di­tions be attached to secure final details of land­scap­ing and tree protection.

4. In terms of eco­logy issues it is noted that the eco­lo­gic­al fea­tures of sig­ni­fic­ance on the site are bats and swifts and that spe­cies pro­tec­tion plans relat­ing to these from the pre­vi­ous applic­a­tion should be resub­mit­ted and the mit­ig­a­tion con­tained therein imple­men­ted. These plans have now been resub­mit­ted. It is also noted that a spe­cies license is pro­posed for bats and SNH will deal with mit­ig­a­tion when con­sid­er­ing this — this license has now been issued.

5. It was also recom­men­ded that an above ground solu­tion for SUDS be pur­sued and revised plans show­ing cel­lu­lar tree plant­ing have now been provided.

6. On this basis it is con­cluded that the pro­pos­als are an improve­ment on the 2018 scheme and with appro­pri­ate mit­ig­a­tion secured by con­di­tion will be an enhance­ment to the area in land­scape, visu­al and eco­lo­gic­al terms.

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 5 26/04/19

1. CNPA Out­door Access Team is sat­is­fied that the devel­op­ment facil­it­ates access onto the sur­round­ing roads to encour­age act­ive travel.

2. Bal­later and Crath­ie Com­munity Coun­cil have con­firmed sup­port for both applic­a­tions. They advise that fol­low­ing dis­cus­sion with Grampi­an Hous­ing Asso­ci­ation (the applic­ants) and mem­bers of the com­munity they are sat­is­fied that mat­ters relat­ing to access, safety, amen­ity and dens­ity which were the sub­ject of objec­tion with the pre­vi­ous applic­a­tions have been addressed. They note that at a pub­lic meet­ing held in Novem­ber 2018 the Com­munity Coun­cil was presen­ted with a let­ter of sup­port for these pro­pos­als signed by 238 mem­bers of the community.

3. The Com­munity Coun­cil has reques­ted to be heard at Com­mit­tee and their response is attached as Appendix 3.

REP­RES­ENT­A­TIONS

1. The applic­a­tions were advert­ised in the loc­al press and Edin­burgh Gaz­ette. Two rep­res­ent­a­tions were received which are attached as Appendix 4. One objects to both applic­a­tions and the oth­er raises points on the applic­a­tion for full plan­ning permission.

2. Objec­tion let­ter notes that the writer has no objec­tion to the redevel­op­ment of the site, but con­siders that more effort should be made to make the design more tra­di­tion­al with any changes so made hav­ing the poten­tial to reduce the num­ber of prop­er­ties and thus reduce car park­ing require­ments. Key points are sum­mar­ised as fol­lows: a) New build­ings not well designed, with wide gables, shal­low roof pitch and roof over­hangs, which are unat­tract­ive. b) Vari­ation in roof lines with no prop­er ter­min­a­tion and small win­dow pro­por­tions giv­en accen­tu­ated hori­zont­al effect. c) Too many roof light styles. d) Use of tim­ber on front elev­a­tion out of char­ac­ter in Ballater.

3. The second rep­res­ent­a­tion high­lights that whilst the writers, who have prop­er­ties oppos­ite the site on Abergel­die Road, will be impacted by the new pro­pos­als they appre­ci­ate the con­cerns of res­id­ents regard­ing the suit­ab­il­ity of School Lane to access the site and as such in prin­cip­al sup­port the pro­pos­al to access the site from Abergel­die Road. Whilst they still con­sider the devel­op­ment to be overly dense and urb­an in design for the Con­ser­va­tion Area and remain con­cerned regard­ing impacts on loc­al drain­age infra­struc­ture and roads, they sup­port the prin­ciple of the applic­a­tion provid­ing approv­al were sub­ject to the fol­low­ing con­di­tions: a) An oblig­a­tion to ensure that a loc­al let­tings policy will be provided and enforced to sat­is­fy the pro­vi­sion of a com­munity use on the site. b) A require­ment for suf­fi­cient plant­ing between the pro­posed car park and Abergel­die Road for both eco­lo­gic­al and buf­fer­ing reasons.

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 5 26/04/19

APPRAIS­AL

1. The fol­low­ing is a joint report for Plan­ning Applic­a­tion (2019/0003/DET) and Lis­ted Build­ing Con­sent applic­a­tion (2019/0006/LBC).

Prin­ciple

1. The prin­ciple of hous­ing devel­op­ment with­in a des­ig­nated set­tle­ment is well estab­lished by Policy 1: New Hous­ing Devel­op­ment of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2015. This sets out in Policy 1.1 Hous­ing in Set­tle­ments that all new hous­ing devel­op­ments with­in set­tle­ments will be sup­por­ted where they occur with­in a des­ig­nated site or where they rein­force and enhance the char­ac­ter of the set­tle­ment max­im­ising oppor­tun­it­ies for infill, con­ver­sion, small scale devel­op­ment, use of derel­ict or under­used land or the redevel­op­ment of land. The pro­posed devel­op­ment, sub­ject to design and lay­out, read­ily com­plies with these prin­ciples being loc­ated with­in Bal­later and con­vert­ing and redevel­op­ing an under­used site.

2. This is rein­forced by Policy 1.8: Con­ver­sions, which explains that con­ver­sion of exist­ing ver­nacu­lar build­ings to hous­ing is sup­por­ted where the build­ing is cap­able of con­ver­sion and the devel­op­ment main­tains the style and char­ac­ter of the ori­gin­al build­ing. Also in terms of prin­ciples, Policy 1.4: Con­tri­bu­tion towards Afford­able Hous­ing also requires that pro­vi­sion gen­er­ally be made for 25% afford­able hous­ing pro­vi­sion on sites – this is far exceeded with the cur­rent sub­mis­sion for 100% afford­able housing.

3. As noted pre­vi­ously in the policy sec­tion, the site is spe­cific­ally des­ig­nated with­in the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan for com­munity uses, high­light­ing that this includes afford­able hous­ing. The set­tle­ment state­ment notes that any new devel­op­ment pro­pos­als must bene­fit the com­munity and it is con­sidered that afford­able hous­ing will indeed bene­fit the com­munity provid­ing much needed social hous­ing in Bal­later. This is par­tic­u­larly so giv­en that pro­vi­sion of afford­able hous­ing in the Nation­al Park is a key pri­or­ity of the recently adop­ted Cairngorms Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan 2017 – 2022. This Plan high­lights that it is cur­rently hard for many house­holds to access hous­ing on the open mar­ket in the Nation­al Park with this being par­tic­u­larly acute in cer­tain areas such as Deeside where the medi­an house prices are around six times high­er than medi­an house­hold incomes. In this case Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil Hous­ing Ser­vice has clearly con­firmed the need for afford­able hous­ing in Bal­later. Finally in this regard the sup­port­ing text to the Bal­later set­tle­ment state­ment in the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan sets out that the com­munity of Bal­later wish to ensure that the advant­ages of liv­ing in Bal­later are passed onto future gen­er­a­tions and to make this hap­pen qual­ity and afford­able hous­ing to meet loc­al needs is seen as a pri­or­ity, using redevel­op­ment oppor­tun­it­ies where pos­sible. Again the pro­posed devel­op­ment read­ily sup­ports all of these objectives.

4. The site is well loc­ated in terms of prox­im­ity to the ser­vices and amen­it­ies of the vil­lage, being with­in ready walk­ing dis­tance of both the vil­lage centre and the sur­round­ing coun­tryside. It is also with­in ready walk­ing dis­tance of bus stops. As such the loc­a­tion is con­sidered to be a very sus­tain­able one com­ply­ing with Policy 3: Sus­tain­able Design of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2015

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 5 26/04/19

which seeks to ensure that devel­op­ment is sited to make sus­tain­able use of resources, in this case reusing a redund­ant build­ing and site, as well as pro­mot­ing sus­tain­able travel methods.

1. The site con­tains lis­ted build­ings which have lain empty for many years since the last use as an Out­door Centre ceased and which are on the Build­ings at Risk register. No oth­er uses for the build­ing have come to fruition and a pro­pos­al to bring these build­ings back into a pro­duct­ive use is greatly wel­comed. Indeed the prin­ciple of con­vert­ing exist­ing build­ing stock to a new use is well estab­lished by Policy 3: Sus­tain­able Design of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2015 which, under Policy 3.3, sup­ports the reuse of redund­ant build­ings where the con­ver­sion works main­tain the style and char­ac­ter of the ori­gin­al build­ing in terms of form, scale, mater­i­als and detail­ing. Sim­il­arly Policy 9: Cul­tur­al Her­it­age sup­ports the con­ser­va­tion and enhance­ment of lis­ted buildings.

2. Finally, as noted pre­vi­ously in this report there is live plan­ning and lis­ted build­ing con­sents for the devel­op­ment of 26 res­id­en­tial units at this site. Accord­ingly this exist­ing con­sent is an import­ant mater­i­al plan­ning con­sid­er­a­tion which clearly estab­lishes the prin­ciple of hous­ing devel­op­ment here.

3. In these over­all cir­cum­stances the prin­ciple of this devel­op­ment is well estab­lished here and greatly wel­comed, com­ply­ing with policy provid­ing the design, ser­vi­cing and lay­out of the pro­pos­als is sat­is­fact­ory and this will now be con­sidered in detail.

Changes com­pared to ori­gin­al submission

1. As noted earli­er the ori­gin­al applic­a­tions for devel­op­ment of 26 units at this site were refused at the May 2018 meet­ing of the CNPA Plan­ning Com­mit­tee and the reas­ons for refus­al related to con­cerns around dens­ity, access arrange­ments, park­ing and open space. This decision was over­turned fol­low­ing a suc­cess­ful plan­ning appeal (Appendix 2) and the con­sents gran­ted remain in force with sus­pens­ive con­di­tions relat­ing to these con­sents now dis­charged enabling site works to com­mence. How­ever, not­with­stand­ing this pos­i­tion, and fol­low­ing fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion and dis­cus­sion with the com­munity, the applic­ants decided to try and address the Committee’s reas­ons for refus­al and the con­cerns of the com­munity around access from School Lane and dens­ity of devel­op­ment. This res­ul­ted in the cur­rent sub­mis­sion which seeks to address these concerns.

2. Appendix I (a) shows the key changes with this cur­rent sub­mis­sion as com­pared to the ori­gin­al 2017 applic­a­tions. These can be sum­mar­ised as fol­lows: a) Remov­al of two res­id­en­tial units in south east­ern corner of site facing Abergel­die Road in order to reduce dens­ity and enable access to be taken from Abergel­die Road, knock­ing an open­ing in the exist­ing cas­tel­lated wall here. b) Vehicu­lar access taken from Abergel­die Road as opposed to School Lane, with exist­ing vehicu­lar accesses onto School Lane nar­rowed down to form ped­es­tri­an access only links. This is inten­ded to remove vehicu­lar access from School Lane which is nar­row­er than Abergel­die Road and was the source of much objec­tion with the ori­gin­al applications.

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 5 26