Item5AALettochRoad20190222PPP

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 5 24/01/2020

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

DEVEL­OP­MENT PRO­POSED: Erec­tion of 7 No. houses (5 no afford­able) at Land 125M NE Of 4 Lettoch Road Nethy Bridge

REF­ER­ENCE: 2019/0222/PPP

APPLIC­ANT: Mr George Knox

DATE CALLED-IN: 22 July 2019

RECOM­MEND­A­TION: Approve Sub­ject to Conditions

CASE OFFICER: Gav­in Miles, Head of Plan­ning and Communities

CNPA Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Applic­a­tion Site

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 5 24/01/2020

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 5 24/01/2020

SITE DESCRIP­TION, PRO­POS­AL AND HIS­TORY Site Description

1. The applic­a­tion site com­prises approx­im­ately 1.3 hec­tares of mature con­i­fer­ous plant­a­tion wood­land, loc­ated on the south east side of Nethy Bridge. The nar­row, single track, Lettoch Road adjoins the south-west­ern site bound­ary with mature wood­land sur­round­ing the remainder of the site. An access track leads into wider wood­land area at the North West side of the site, at the end of the exist­ing prop­er­ties on Lettoch Road. There are fields imme­di­ately oppos­ite the site on the south side of Lettoch Road. The Lettoch Road edge of the site has a few dis­tinct­ive vet­er­an Scots Pine trees.

2. The site is iden­ti­fied with­in the ​‘Nat­ive Wood­land Sur­vey for Scot­land 2014’ as 100% nat­ive wood­land, of mainly Scots Pine. The site also has spruce trees that have seeded a dense under­storey of young­er spruce in some areas, while oth­er parts of the site have wet and dry ground veget­a­tion typ­ic­al of nat­ive and long estab­lished pine wood­lands. The wider wood­land area in the applicant’s own­er­ship of around 13.7 Ha is mainly Scots Pine plant­a­tion but with fur­ther areas of spruce plant­ing, includ­ing one dense area of 2.4 Ha in its own right.

3. The applic­a­tion site is adja­cent to the set­tle­ment bound­ary of Nethy Bridge as defined in the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan and bey­ond the cur­rent 30mph speed lim­ited zone of the village.

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​line- applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=summary&keyVal=PUJINFSI0CH00

Title Draw­ing Date on Date Received Num­ber Plan* Plans: Loc­a­tion Plan 22 July 2019 Pro­posed Site Lay­out Plan & NB/A01 19 Decem­ber 22 July 2019 Loc­a­tion Plan Rev.F 2017 Sup­port­ing Doc­u­ments: Land­scape Plan and Sec­tions with 22 July 2019 Full Spe­cific­a­tion Drain­age State­ment 01 July 2019 22 July 2019 Con­struc­tion Meth­od State­ment 22 July 2019 CNPA Cor­res­pond­ence 22 July 2019 Applic­a­tion State­ment 22 July 2019

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 5 24/01/2020

Heads of Terms Agree­ment 09 July 2019 22 July 2019 Pro­tec­ted Mam­mals Ter­restri­al 22 July 2019 Sur­vey Report Pol­lu­tion Pre­ven­tion Plan 22 July 2019 Hab­it­at Sur­vey Report 22 July 2019 Pho­tos Part I and Part 2 22 July 2019 HSCHT Afford­able Hous­ing 18 Septem­ber 2019 State­ment Sur­vey of Trees for Bats 5 Nov 2019 5 Nov 2019 *Where no spe­cif­ic day of month has been provided on the plan, the sys­tem defaults to the 1^st of the month.

1. This applic­a­tion seeks plan­ning per­mis­sion in prin­ciple for the erec­tion of 7 dwell­ings (5 of which are pro­posed as afford­able units) with asso­ci­ated access. An indic­at­ive site lay­out has been provided, which shows the erec­tion of dwell­ings in a lin­ear form, par­al­lel to Lettoch Road with the cre­ation of two vehicu­lar access points to the pub­lic road. The exist­ing forestry track, which segreg­ates the site into two par­cels of land, is pro­posed to be retained, with plots I and 2 on the north-west­ern side of the site and plots 3- 7 on the south­ern side of the site.

2. The applic­a­tion is sup­por­ted by the fol­low­ing inform­a­tion: a) Applic­a­tion State­ment, CNPA Cor­res­pond­ence and Pho­tos: these doc­u­ments provide an out­line to the policy frame­work and jus­ti­fic­a­tion for the scheme. The doc­u­ments inform that the applic­ants have owned the site for 15 years, which forms part of a 40 acre com­mer­cial plant­a­tion, man­aged by Scot­tish Wood­land. Ref­er­ence is made to the applicant’s pre­vi­ous exper­i­ence of devel­op­ing the adja­cent site, now known as Lyn­stock Park in 2007. The doc­u­ments con­clude that the pro­posed devel­op­ment ​“is a nat­ur­al exten­sion of the vil­lage and is com­pli­ant with sev­er­al of the cri­ter­ia out­lined with­in the CNPA Adop­ted Plan for Nethy Bridge for 2015”. A copy of cor­res­pond­ence between CNPA Officers, dated 4^th March 2019, details the addi­tion­al inform­a­tion required to sup­port a plan­ning applic­a­tion for the pro­posed devel­op­ment. b) Afford­able Hous­ing State­ment and Heads of Term Agree­ment: An afford­able hous­ing state­ment has been provided by The High­lands Small Com­munity Hous­ing Trust in sup­port of the applic­a­tion detail­ing that the pro­pos­al will provide a 70% con­tri­bu­tion of afford­able hous­ing on site. A copy of the Heads of Terms agree­ment has been provided which states the land trans­fer­ence of pro­posed plots 4- 7 to HSCHT. These plots are pro­posed to be sold as ser­viced plots. HSCHT would then re-sell three plots as dis­coun­ted self-build plots and devel­op two semi-detached houses for afford­able rent­ing. A rur­al hous­ing bur­den would be attached to all five plots to pro­tect the dis­count in per­petu­ity. An ana­lys­is of the loc­al area prop­erty mar­ket for prop­er­ties to buy and rent as at 18 Septem­ber 2019 has been included and the cur­rent demand for hous­ing on the High­land Hous­ing Register is great­er than sup­ply. c) Eco­logy reports includ­ing: Phase I Hab­it­at Sur­vey Report and Pro­tec­ted Ter­restri­al Mam­mal Sur­vey Report: A pro­tec­ted ter­restri­al mam­mal sur­vey was under­taken to assess the like­li­hood of the pres­ence of wild­cat, badger, pine mar­tin, red squir­rel, otter and water vole with­in the devel­op­ment bound­ary. Evid­ence of red squir­rel and badger were found dur­ing the sur­vey and noted that although not

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 5 24/01/2020

spe­cific­ally included with­in the sur­vey work, sev­er­al trees were iden­ti­fied as being suit­able for bat roost­ing. The report recom­mends addi­tion­al sur­vey work is under­taken for each of the mam­mals. The sub­mit­ted Phase I Hab­it­at Sur­vey Report was under­taken to assess of the hab­it­at, wet­land hab­it­ats and the ground­wa­ter depend­ent ter­restri­al eco­sys­tems. The report con­cludes that the high value of many of the hab­it­ats and veget­a­tion with­in the wider study area means that addi­tion­al sur­vey work is recom­men­ded. The report also notes that obser­va­tions from the sur­vey work show the pro­posed devel­op­ment site has a rel­at­ively high dens­ity of pro­tec­ted rep­tile spe­cies. Fur­ther sur­vey work is sub­sequently recom­men­ded. d) Sur­vey of Trees for Bats: Fur­ther sur­vey work for bats and red squir­rel con­firmed that there were no winter hibern­at­ing bat roosts and low poten­tial for sum­mer bat roosts. The sur­vey also iden­ti­fied one poten­tial red squir­rel drey and mit­ig­a­tion meas­ures to provide four red squir­rel drey boxes. e) Con­struc­tion Meth­od State­ment: details the con­struc­tion meth­od­o­logy for the pro­pos­al, includ­ing: train­ing and legis­la­tion, first aid, wel­fare arrange­ments and emer­gency pro­ced­ures. f) Pol­lu­tion Pre­ven­tion Plan: explains how poten­tial pol­lut­ants, such as silt, cement, con­crete and fuel/​chem­ic­al spills are pro­posed to be con­trolled and dealt with dur­ing con­struc­tion and site oper­a­tion. g) Land­scape Plan and Sec­tions with Full Spe­cific­a­tion: The doc­u­ment states that a 15 metre buf­fer zone is pro­posed to be cre­ated between the devel­op­ment and the com­mer­cial wood­land to the north-east of the site con­sist­ing of loc­ally sourced spe­cies. Land­scape main­ten­ance is pro­posed to be under­taken bi-annu­ally with the replace­ment of any failed plants/​trees with­in the first five years of plant­ing. Land­scape mit­ig­a­tion and com­pens­a­tion is pro­posed to be provided by the buf­fer zone and any per­mit­ted felling of the com­mer­cial wood­land would be replanted in line with Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment require­ments. On the indic­at­ive site plan, it is shown that sev­en trees of mature/semi-mature Scots Pine are pro­posed to be retained along the road front­age. In addi­tion, A buf­fer zone along the south-east­ern site bound­ary is pro­posed to retain a total of 11 semi-mature Scots Pine. The plan also indic­ates that all Sitka Spruce is to be removed with­in the applic­a­tion site and replanted with nat­ive spe­cies of Row­an, Juni­per and Birch trees. h) Drain­age State­ment: sug­gests that the nat­ur­al sub­soils of the site are unsuit­able for infilt­ra­tion meth­ods of sur­face water run-off dis­pos­al and there­fore pro­poses the install­a­tion of a fil­ter drain togeth­er with a silt trap upstream of the pro­posed fil­ter drain to meet the require­ments for sus­pen­ded solids in CIRIA C753: The SUDS Manu­al. Drive­way run-off is pro­posed to be col­lec­ted in trapped gul­lies and lead­ing into private sur­face water drain­age plot drain­age, which in turn is dir­ec­ted to a fil­ter drain, dis­char­ging to an atten­u­ation tank with a restric­ted out­let. The restric­ted out­let man­hole will dis­charge to an adopt­able sur­face water sew­er exten­sion to be con­struc­ted on Lettoch Road. Foul water from each dwell­ing will be col­lec­ted in indi­vidu­al private foul drain­age which will dis­charge into an adopt­able foul sew­er exten­sion to be con­struc­ted on Lettoch Road. The doc­u­ment con­firms that the site is not shown on SEPA’s Flood Map as hav­ing the poten­tial to flood dur­ing a M200 storm event.

1. Indic­at­ive plans of the pro­pos­al are included with­in Appendix I.

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 5 24/01/2020

His­tory

1. The site of this plan­ning applic­a­tion was put for­ward by the applic­ant in Feb­ru­ary 2017 as a site for hous­ing at the Call for Sites stage of the LDP. The pro­pos­al was for a 2Ha site to be alloc­ated for 7 houses (five open mar­ket prop­er­ties and 2 afford­able units). The site was not taken for­ward in the pro­posed LDP because, on the basis of the inform­a­tion sub­mit­ted at that time, it was con­sidered to be a large site for the low num­ber of units pro­posed, would be likely to lead to the loss of a sig­ni­fic­ant area of high qual­ity wood­land hab­it­at and change the char­ac­ter of that part of the village.

2. An applic­a­tion for plan­ning per­mis­sion in prin­ciple (ref­er­ence: 2018/00019/PPP) for the erec­tion of sev­en houses at the same site was refused per­mis­sion on 03 July 2018. The applic­a­tion included two units of afford­able accom­mod­a­tion. The reas­ons for refus­al are as fol­lows: a) The pro­posed hous­ing devel­op­ment is loc­ated out­with the defined set­tle­ment bound­ary of Nethy Bridge where hous­ing devel­op­ment is not sup­por­ted and is con­trary to Policy 1: New Hous­ing Devel­op­ment of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2015; b) The pro­posed devel­op­ment will res­ult in the loss of high qual­ity nat­ive wood­land and asso­ci­ated spe­cies. Insuf­fi­cient inform­a­tion has been sub­mit­ted and it has not been demon­strated that this loss can be suit­ably com­pensated for through appro­pri­ate mit­ig­a­tion, con­trary to Policy 4: Nat­ur­al Her­it­age of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2015; c) The pro­posed devel­op­ment will have a sig­ni­fic­ant adverse impact on the wood­land set­ting of the vil­lage and an adverse effect on the land­scape char­ac­ter and exper­i­ence of the spe­cial qual­it­ies of the Nation­al Park con­trary to Policy 5: Land­scape of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2015.

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 POLICY I applic­a­tion are marked with a cross NEW HOUS­ING DEVEL­OP­MENT X POLICY 2 SUP­PORT­ING ECO­NOM­IC GROWTH POLICY 3 SUS­TAIN­ABLE DESIGN X POLICY 4 NAT­UR­AL HER­IT­AGE ㄨˋ POLICY 5 LAND­SCAPE X POLICY 6 THE SIT­ING AND DESIGN OF DIGIT­AL COM­MU­NIC­A­TIONS EQUIP­MENT POLICY 7 RENEW­ABLE ENERGY POLICY 8 SPORT AND RECREATION

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 5 24/01/2020

POLICY 9 CUL­TUR­AL HER­IT­AGE 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 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 Policy 10 Resources Non-Stat­utory Guid­ance X Policy 11 Developer Con­tri­bu­tions Sup­ple­ment­ary Guid­ance X

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2020

1. The emer­ging Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan (“Pro­posed Plan”) which will cov­er the peri­od 2020 – 2025 is cur­rently being pro­gressed. The Pro­posed Plan has been through a pub­lic con­sulta­tion pro­cess and the form­al responses have been assessed and sub­mit­ted along with all oth­er rel­ev­ant mater­i­als to Scot­tish Min­is­ters for exam­in­a­tion. As the exam­in­a­tion of the Pro­posed Plan is yet to start, the Pro­posed Plan and its con­tents cur­rently carry lim­ited weight.

CON­SULTA­TIONS A sum­mary of the main issues raised by con­sul­tees now follows:

1. Scot­tish Nat­ur­al Her­it­age (SNH) notes that the site lies between Craigmore Spe­cial Pro­tec­tion Area (SPA) and Aber­nethy Forest SPA which are noti­fied for their caper­cail­lie interest. SNH con­sider that the pro­pos­al is unlikely to have a sig­ni­fic­ant effect on caper­cail­lie qual­i­fy­ing interests either dir­ectly or indir­ectly and an appro­pri­ate assess­ment is there­fore not required. SNH note that: there are no records of caper­cail­lie with­in or imme­di­ately adja­cent to the pro­posed devel­op­ment site; the site is not neces­sar­ily used as a ​‘step­ping stone’ for caper­cail­lie to oth­er SPAs; the scale of the pro­posed devel­op­ment is very small in rela­tion to the pop­u­la­tion of Nethy Bridge

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 5 24/01/2020

and the anti­cip­ated increase in pop­u­la­tion is unlikely to res­ult in any change to the exist­ing pat­terns of recre­ation in the area or increased dis­turb­ance to caper­cail­lie; and finally, recre­ation­al routes already exist which are suit­able for walk­ers and cyc­lists which avoid sens­it­ive habitats.

1. Scot­tish Water has no objec­tion but high­light that this does not con­firm that the pro­posed devel­op­ment can cur­rently be ser­viced. They note that there is cur­rently suf­fi­cient capa­city in the Aviemore Water Treat­ment Works and there is cur­rently suf­fi­cient capa­city in the Nethy Bridge Waste Water Treat­ment Works. How­ever, they advise that once a form­al con­nec­tion applic­a­tion is sub­mit­ted to the Agency after plan­ning per­mis­sion has been gran­ted, they will review the avail­ab­il­ity of capa­city at that time and advise the applic­ant accordingly.

2. The High­land Coun­cil Trans­port Plan­ning Team has no objec­tion to the scheme sub­ject to the inclu­sion of con­di­tions as out­lined below. A sum­mary of their com­ments now fol­lows: a) Road Lay­out: The Team recom­mend that the road lay­out along the front­age of the devel­op­ment is improved by upgrad­ing the road to a 5.5 metre wide car­riage­way; the addi­tion of a 2 metre wide ker­bed foot­way on the devel­op­ment side of the road and provide street light­ing. These works are required to improved road safety allow­ing 2 vehicles to pass and provid­ing a safe walk­ing route to the vil­lage for the res­id­ents. b) Traffic Reg­u­la­tion Order: To cre­ate a safer envir­on­ment, it is recom­men­ded that the 30mph speed lim­it be exten­ded to a point bey­ond the south­ern bound­ary of the devel­op­ment. This would also be sub­ject to a Traffic Reg­u­la­tion Order (TRO) and the relo­ca­tion of the 30mph speed lim­it shown on any plans would be indic­at­ive until the final determ­in­a­tion under the TRO pro­cess. c) Access Lay­out: The Team con­sider that the res­id­en­tial private access lay­outs are accept­able and they wel­come the upgrade pro­posed to the forestry access loc­ated between plots 2 and 3. The Team recom­mend that the exist­ing forestry access to the north of the site is also upgraded to a stand­ard that is accept­able to the Coun­cil. d) Vis­ib­il­ity: The Team require the sub­mis­sion of inform­a­tion to demon­strate that the pro­posed private and forestry accesses vis­ib­il­ity splays are appro­pri­ate for a pro­posed 30pmh road speed lim­it. e) Park­ing and Turn­ing: The Team require the sub­mis­sion of inform­a­tion to demon­strate that adequate park­ing for 2 cars and turn­ing space so that all vehicles can enter and exit the site in for­ward gear. f) Waste Man­age­ment: The Team require the sub­mis­sion of inform­a­tion to demon­strate that there is adequate pro­vi­sion with­in the site for refuse col­lec­tion. g) Roads Author­ity Per­mis­sion: The Trans­port Team note that a Road Con­struc­tion Con­sent would be required pri­or to any work com­men­cing on or adja­cent to the pub­lic road.

3. The High­land Coun­cil Flood Risk Man­age­ment Team has no objec­tion to the scheme sub­ject to the inclu­sion of two con­di­tions on any sub­sequent decision notice requir­ing con­form­a­tion to the High­land Flood Risk Man­age­ment Team that per­mis­sion from Scot­tish Water has been giv­en to dis­charge to their sys­tem, togeth­er with the max­im­um dis­charge rate that they would accept; and a con­di­tion requir­ing the details of the final drain­age design to be sub­mit­ted for review and approv­al which shall include cal­cu­la­tions that demon­strate that the net­work will lim­it dis­charge to the

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 5 24/01/2020

exist­ing green­field run-off rates for all storms up to the 200 year plus cli­mate change event.

1. The High­land Coun­cil Con­tam­in­ated Land Team has no spe­cif­ic com­ment on the scheme and sub­sequently does not require any con­tam­in­a­tion invest­ig­a­tion at the site.

2. The High­land Coun­cil Forestry Officer objects to the scheme. The Officer notes that the wood­land is lis­ted in the Nat­ive Wood­land Sur­vey of Scot­land as ​‘pole stage imma­ture nat­ive pine­wood of very high nat­ive­ness and semi-nat­ur­al­ness’. Although the wood­land is not included in the Ancient Wood­land Invent­ory, the Officer con­siders that the site should be regarded as Ancient wood­land 2(a):“semi- nat­ur­al wood­land from maps of 1860 and con­tinu­ously wooded to the present day”. The Forestry Officer observes that no arbor­i­cul­tur­al assess­ments have been included in sup­port of the scheme. Con­cern is raised that the devel­op­ment is fully with­in wood­land which is out­with the set­tle­ment bound­ary and the pro­pos­als ​‘would not ensure the qual­ity of sur­round­ing wood­land, and sens­it­ive valu­able hab­it­ats is not com­prom­ised’ as required by the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan. Ref­er­ence is also made to the pro­pos­al being con­trary to Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan Policies 3 and 4, the Scot­tish Government’s Con­trol of Wood­land Remov­al Policy and Sec­tion 194 of the Scot­tish Plan­ning Policy (June 2014) as the pro­pos­als would affect the integ­rity of ancient wood­land with­in the site.

3. The High­land Coun­cil Land­scape Officer objects to the applic­a­tion on the grounds of the pro­pos­al being con­sidered con­trary to the object­ives and pri­or­it­ies set out to pro­tect the approach and set­ting of Nethy Bridge. The Officer con­siders that the effect of devel­op­ing with­in this dens­er wood­land would be to com­prom­ise the impres­sion of Nethy Bridge being situ­ated with­in wood­land, of its being a ​‘forest vil­lage’. Wood­land would be reduced from a defin­ing and con­tain­ing char­ac­ter­ist­ic, to a gen­er­al back­drop to lin­ear devel­op­ment. The Officer notes that the pro­posed 15m depth buf­fer plant­ing lies out­with the red line and with­in the exist­ing forest area, mean­ing that the hous­ing site will still cause a reduc­tion in the forest pres­ence at the edge of the settlement.

4. CNPA Land­scape Officer ref­er­ences the sim­il­ar­it­ies and dif­fer­ences between the cur­rent scheme and the pre­vi­ously with­drawn scheme of 2018/0019/PPP. The Officer con­siders that com­ments made on the pre­vi­ous scheme are still of rel­ev­ance which are sum­mar­ised as fol­lows: a) The devel­op­ment raises issues in rela­tion to land­scape and visu­al impacts and impacts on the Spe­cial Land­scape Qual­it­ies (SLQs) that are not cap­able of res­ol­u­tion. This wood­land con­trib­utes sig­ni­fic­antly to the set­ting of the set­tle­ment and is iden­ti­fied with­in the 2005 Hous­ing Capa­city Study as ​‘sens­it­ive wood­land’ and they would recom­mend it be iden­ti­fied for long term reten­tion giv­en its land­scape sig­ni­fic­ance. The loc­a­tion and char­ac­ter of this wood­land con­trib­utes to the spe­cial land­scape qual­it­ies of the Park and as such devel­op­ment on this site would com­prom­ise the qual­ity of the land­scape set­ting on this side of Nethy Bridge. Devel­op­ment here would adversely affect the char­ac­ter of this minor road and impinge upon views. Con­struc­tion of hous­ing devel­op­ments with­in wood­land invari­ably require space bey­ond the foot­print of the buildings

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 5 24/01/2020

and access and this increases on uneven/​slop­ing sites and where drain­age is poor as in this case. The pro­posed devel­op­ment would require the remov­al of a sig­ni­fic­ant num­ber of trees and a fur­ther risk to trees through can­opy and roof dam­age. The impact on the char­ac­ter of the wood­land and the spe­cial land­scape qual­it­ies that can be exper­i­enced on this edge of Nethy Bridge would be significant.

1. The Land­scape Officer notes the inten­tion of retain­ing some of the exist­ing wood­land on and around the site how­ever the Officer offers the fol­low­ing addi­tion­al views on the scheme not­ing: a) The con­struc­tion of the houses, drain­age, ser­vice pro­vi­sion and gar­dens will require most of the site to be cleared of wood­land; b) High­land Coun­cil gen­er­ally recom­mend that a 20m stan­doff dis­tance is made between retained trees and hous­ing; c) The vis­ib­il­ity splays will require all trees to be removed and much of the retained front­age wood­land is with­in this area. This includes the prom­in­ent vet­er­an trees along the front­age; d) This is com­poun­ded by loc­ated the foot­path fur­ther into the site, very close to the trunks of TI, 2, 3, 4,5 and 7 which is likely to cause tree dam­age. Sev­er­al of these trees are import­ant loc­al land­scape fea­tures due to their size and form; e) The concept of ​“houses set into the exist­ing land­scape” is ambigu­ous and as there will be little or noth­ing left of this prin­ciple land­scape fea­ture on the front­age of the site. The plan does not dif­fer­en­ti­ate between retained exist­ing and new plant­ing. A tree sur­vey is absent. f) There is ref­er­ence to the replace­ment of wood­land lost how­ever no loc­a­tion for this is stated.

2. The Land­scape Officer con­cludes that the devel­op­ment raises issues in rela­tion to land­scape and visu­al impacts on SLQs that are not cap­able of resolution.

3. CNPA Eco­logy Officer ini­tially reques­ted fur­ther sur­vey work related to bats and red squir­rel to be under­taken to inform the assess­ment. This inform­a­tion was sub­sequently provided and con­firmed no bat roosts were present and that two vet­er­an trees by the road­side had poten­tial for red squir­rel dreys and so must be avoided. The Officer notes that the pro­pos­al involves the con­ver­sion of high qual­ity nat­ive wood­land to hous­ing devel­op­ment, and that there is a strong pre­sump­tion against the remov­al of nat­ive wood­land with high biod­iversity value. Sur­vey work in sup­port of the applic­a­tion as not under­taken for lichen, moss and fungi but the Officer notes that the NVC sur­vey iden­ti­fied that there was a rich diversity. There is there­fore, a pre­sump­tion that this wood­land has a high like­li­hood of sup­port­ing region­ally and nation­ally rare spe­cies and no details of mit­ig­a­tion or com­pens­a­tion pro­pos­als were included in sup­port of the scheme for the loss of hab­it­at proposed.

4. CNPA Out­door Access Officer has reviewed the applic­a­tion details and con­siders that there are no neg­at­ive impacts on paths or the exer­cise of access rights

5. Nethy Bridge Com­munity Coun­cil were con­sul­ted on the applic­a­tion, but have not provided any form­al response to the scheme.

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 5 24/01/2020

REP­RES­ENT­A­TIONS

1. The applic­a­tion was advert­ised when first sub­mit­ted. A total of two let­ters of rep­res­ent­a­tion have been received from indi­vidu­al mem­bers of the pub­lic, object­ing to the applic­a­tion. Cop­ies of the pub­lic responses can be viewed at Appendix 2. A sum­mary of the com­ments is provided below: a) The prosed devel­op­ment is out­with the set­tle­ment bound­ary con­trary to Policy I of the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2015 and Policy I of the Draft Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2020; b) The site is not alloc­ated for devel­op­ment with­in the adop­ted Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2015 or the emer­ging Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2020; c) The pro­posed devel­op­ment would have a sig­ni­fic­ant adverse impact on the wood­land set­ting of the vil­lage; d) The pro­pos­al would cause an adverse impact on the land­scape char­ac­ter and spe­cial land­scape qual­it­ies of the Nation­al Park con­trary to Policy 5 of the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan e) Con­trary to the pre­sump­tion against the remov­al of nat­ive wood­land with high biod­iversity value; f) The pro­pos­al would under­mine the HI site hous­ing alloc­a­tion in the draft Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2020; g) The pro­pos­al is con­trary to the object­ives for Nethy Bridge as iden­ti­fied in the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2015; h) The road is unsuit­able for more hous­ing; i) Destruc­tion of a wooded area full of wild­life; j) There are more suit­able loc­a­tions for hous­ing devel­op­ment in oth­er areas of the vil­lage which could be developed with less dam­age to the nat­ur­al environment;

APPRAIS­AL Prin­ciple of Housing

1. Policy I: New Hous­ing Devel­op­ment of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2015 provides sup­port for new afford­able hous­ing devel­op­ment out­side set­tle­ment bound­ar­ies and alloc­ated sites where it meets an iden­ti­fied need. The policy also allows for afford­able hous­ing fun­ded by cross sub­sidy from an open mar­ket ele­ment. This pro­pos­al will provide 70% afford­able hous­ing (five units of the sev­en) beside a rur­al set­tle­ment where there has been no new afford­able hous­ing delivered dur­ing the life of the cur­rent LDP and where there are lim­ited cur­rent and pro­posed hous­ing sites alloc­ated in either the cur­rent LDP or future LDP. The two open mar­ket units provide the applic­ant and own­er with a return that will allow them to sell the land to an afford­able hous­ing pro­vider for a nom­in­al fee, enabling the deliv­ery of the afford­able housing.

2. The long-stand­ing desirab­il­ity of Nethy Bridge as a place to live and vis­it means that house prices are high and land for build­ing is expens­ive. When small sites come to the mar­ket, they are fre­quently developed either by rich indi­vidu­als and/​or as high value hol­i­day or second homes. Nethy Bridge con­tin­ues to have high demand for afford­able hous­ing, with first choice wait­ing list num­bers from the High­land Hous­ing Register

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 5 24/01/2020

three times the num­ber of re-lets and twenty times the num­ber when oth­er choices are included. The high cost of hous­ing in Nethy Bridge and the lack of a sup­ply of new afford­able hous­ing means that it is and will con­tin­ue to be increas­ingly dif­fi­cult for people work­ing in the loc­al eco­nomy to find hous­ing in the area.

1. On bal­ance, the prin­ciple of the pro­pos­al is con­sidered to be accept­able in accord­ance with the require­ments of Policy I: New Hous­ing Devel­op­ment of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2015, sub­ject to the oth­er plan­ning con­sid­er­a­tions out­lined below.

Envir­on­ment­al Issues

1. Policy 4: Nat­ur­al Her­it­age of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2015 seeks to ensure that there are no adverse impacts upon pro­tec­ted spe­cies or biod­iversity whilst Policy 10: Resources sets out the need to fully con­sider impacts on flood­ing and water resources.

2. There are no nation­al or inter­na­tion­al des­ig­na­tions cov­er­ing the site. Scot­tish Nat­ur­al Her­it­age con­firmed that while the pro­pos­al is situ­ated between two Spe­cial Pro­tec­tion Areas noti­fied for their caper­cail­lie interest, to the north and south of Nethy Bridge, the pro­pos­al is unlikely to have a sig­ni­fic­ant effect on the qual­i­fy­ing interests of the Natura sites either dir­ectly or indir­ectly and an appro­pri­ate assess­ment was not required to be undertaken.

3. The wood­land and ground flora of the site is of sim­il­ar qual­ity to much of the semi- nat­ur­al wood­land around Nethy Bridge. It is not iden­ti­fied with the Ancient Wood­land Invent­or­ies but has a gen­er­al his­tory of long-estab­lished wood­land, and a ground flora that is con­sist­ent with ancient wood­land and it is recor­ded as 100% nat­ive pine wood­land in the Nat­ive Wood­land Sur­vey of Scot­land. The site itself is wood­land of a high eco­lo­gic­al value, with poten­tial for many of the spe­cies char­ac­ter­ist­ic of the nat­ive pine wood­lands sur­round­ing Nethy Bridge. The past man­age­ment of the wood­land on the site and the wider area as com­mer­cial plant­a­tion has intro­duced non- nat­ive con­ifer spe­cies, and some parts of the site and the wider wood­land in the applicant’s own­er­ship have an invas­ive under­storey of young spruce that will change the diversity of the site over time unless it is man­aged differently.

4. Fur­ther sur­vey work for bats and red squir­rel con­firmed that there were no winter hibern­at­ing bat roosts and low poten­tial for sum­mer bat roosts. The sur­vey also iden­ti­fied one poten­tial red squir­rel drey and mit­ig­a­tion meas­ures to provide four red squir­rel drey boxes.

5. The devel­op­ment of the site will res­ult in the loss of wood­land and ground hab­it­at with the devel­op­ment site. It is unlikely and unne­ces­sary for all 1.3 Ha of the site to be des­troyed by the devel­op­ment pro­pos­al because care­ful sit­ing of houses, util­it­ies and infra­struc­ture at the detailed plan­ning stage could min­im­ise hab­it­at loss and dis­turb­ance. The area to be developed could eas­ily be half the site area and con­tin­ue to have gen­er­ous private gar­dens. The loss of that wood­land is unlikely to affect the over­all integ­rity of the nat­ive wood­land hab­it­ats and spe­cies that rely on them around the site or around Nethy Bridge.

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 5 24/01/2020

1. Nev­er­the­less, the devel­op­ment of the site would res­ult in a per­man­ent loss of a small area of poten­tial ancient wood­land that would be irre­place­able. The pro­pos­al can­not com­ply on its own with nation­al policy seek­ing to pre­vent wood­land loss. It is hard to quanti­fy this impact but for ref­er­ence the 1.3 Ha site is approx­im­ately 10% of the wood­land owned by the applic­ant, com­prises 0.5% of the wood­land with­in Ikm of the site bound­ary and 0.75% of the Ancient Wood­land Invent­ory wood­land offi­cially recor­ded with­in Ikm of the site boundary.

2. The applic­ant has indic­ated they would be will­ing to man­age the wider wood­land area of 13.7 Ha that they own to improve its eco­lo­gic­al value over the longer term. This would involve the remov­al of non-nat­ive spe­cies through­out the wood­land to allow nat­ive wood­land regen­er­a­tion and longer term wood­land man­age­ment to pre­vent the regrowth of those invas­ive non-nat­ive spe­cies. Without such man­age­ment, the eco­lo­gic­al value of both the wider wood­land and the devel­op­ment site will decline in the longer term. Such a man­age­ment plan could be required by con­di­tion and in the long term, would secure pos­it­ive man­age­ment for a sig­ni­fic­ant area of wood­land (ten times the area that could be lost) some of which is recor­ded as Ancient Wood­land Invent­ory land and some of which is argu­ably ancient wood­land, on the edge of Nethy Bridge, and would incor­por­ate a dir­ect hab­it­at enhance­ment through the replace­ment of non-nat­ive wood­land with nat­ive woodland.

3. Because of the per­man­ent loss of an area of wood­land, the pro­pos­al can­not be con­sidered to fully com­ply with Policy 4: Nat­ur­al Her­it­age of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2015. How­ever, with con­di­tions attached to min­im­ise hab­it­at loss and a long term man­age­ment plan to improve the biod­iversity of the remain­ing wood­land, the pro­pos­al would also have pos­it­ive bene­fits for biod­iversity that can be taken into account.

4. The High­land Council’s Flood Risk Plan­ning team have no objec­tion to the applic­a­tion and con­di­tions can be applied to man­age sur­face and foul water dis­charge to their sat­is­fac­tion. The pro­pos­al is con­sidered to com­ply with Policy 10: Resources of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2015.

Land­scape Issues

1. Policy 5: Land­scape of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2015 pre­sumes against devel­op­ment which does not con­serve and enhance the land­scape char­ac­ter and spe­cial qual­it­ies of the Nation­al Park and in par­tic­u­lar the set­ting of the pro­posed devel­op­ment. This is rein­forced by Policy 3: New Devel­op­ment, which seeks to ensure that all new devel­op­ment is sym­path­et­ic to the tra­di­tion­al pat­tern and char­ac­ter of the sur­round­ing areas, loc­al ver­nacu­lar and loc­al dis­tinct­ive­ness. It is there­fore clear that policy requires all new devel­op­ment to enhance and com­ple­ment both the Nation­al Park and the char­ac­ter of the set­tle­ment itself, using land­scape to com­ple­ment the setting.

2. The CNPA Land­scape Officer and High­land Coun­cil Land­scape Officer and are both of the opin­ion that the devel­op­ment of the site will change the exist­ing land­scape char­ac­ter and the char­ac­ter of Nethy Bridge. Both assume that most of wood­land on

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 5 24/01/2020

the site will be removed. The High­land Coun­cil Land­scape Officer argues that it would mean Nethy Bridge would no longer appear as a wood­land vil­lage con­tained by wood­land. The CNPA Land­scape Officer con­siders changes would have a sig­ni­fic­ant effect on the land­scape set­ting on that part of Nethy Bridge and on the Spe­cial Land­scape Qual­it­ies of the area.

1. How­ever, devel­op­ment with­in this site need not res­ult in the com­plete loss of wood­land. The devel­op­ment of hous­ing in the imme­di­ately adja­cent site retained a sig­ni­fic­ant num­ber of trees with­in plots and to the road front­age, main­tain­ing a char­ac­ter of hous­ing on a wood­land edge. This applic­a­tion for plan­ning per­mis­sion in prin­ciple has the oppor­tun­ity for detailed design to lim­it tree loss and main­tain trees to the Lettoch Road edge as well as in breaks between plots or clusters of plots. The applic­a­tion does not affect the wood­land to the south east of the site so the lim­it of devel­op­ment along this side of Lettoch Road will con­tin­ue to appear as being con­tained by wood­land and the devel­op­ment itself would be con­sist­ent with the wood­land vil­lage char­ac­ter of Nethy Bridge.

2. The detail of fur­ther plan­ning applic­a­tions will define the lay­out of the devel­op­ment and its infra­struc­ture as well as the dir­ect and indir­ect impacts on its wood­land. Care­ful design and com­pact plots would min­im­ise tree loss and provide an oppor­tun­ity to con­serve areas of wood­land and vet­er­an trees. An appro­pri­ate land­scap­ing scheme with post con­struc­tion replant­ing where neces­sary and man­age­ment of retained wood­land will secure long term wood­land cov­er. It is con­sidered that the pro­pos­al is cap­able of com­ply­ing with Policy 5: Land­scape and Policy 3: Sus­tain­able Design of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2015 with appro­pri­ate con­di­tions applied.

Ser­vi­cing and Access

1. Policy 3: Sus­tain­able Design and Policy 10: Resources of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2015 set out the need for new devel­op­ment to be sat­is­fact­or­ily ser­viced and without harm to resources or the envir­on­ment. Policy 3: Sus­tain­able Design also requires that new devel­op­ment should include an appro­pri­ate means of access, egress and space for off-street parking.

2. It is con­sidered that with appro­pri­ate con­di­tions applied to this applic­a­tion for plan­ning per­mis­sion in prin­ciple, the pro­pos­al com­plies with Policy 3: Sus­tain­able Design and Policy 10: Resources, of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2015.

Developer Con­tri­bu­tions

1. Policy 11: Developer Con­tri­bu­tions of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2015 sets out that where devel­op­ment gives rise to a need to increase or improve pub­lic ser­vices, facil­it­ies or infra­struc­ture or mit­ig­ate adverse effects then the developer will nor­mally be required to make a fair and reas­on­able con­tri­bu­tion towards addi­tion­al costs or require­ments. The pro­posed devel­op­ment will not have a sig­ni­fic­ant effect on any infra­struc­ture or facil­it­ies in the loc­al area.

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 5 24/01/2020

Oth­er Issues Raised in Con­sulta­tions and Representations

1. The site is loc­ated oppos­ite a site pro­posed for hous­ing alloc­a­tion in the pro­posed Cairng