Item5Appendix2ApplicantsSupportingCase20180043DETFillingStation AMENDED

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 5 Appendix 2 22/03/2019

AGENDA ITEM 5

APPENDIX 2

2018/0043/DET

APPLIC­ANTS SUP­PORT­ING CASE

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY UGH­DAR­RAS PAIRC NAISEANTA Α’ MHON­AIDH RUAIDH

Plan­ning Applic­a­tion: Pro­posed Erec­tion of Res­id­en­tial Devel­op­ment on Site of Former Filling Sta­tion at Grampi­an Road, Aviemore Applic­ant: Cairngorm Res­id­en­tial Lim­ited Applic­a­tion Ref: 2018/0043/DET

Over­view Plan­ning Statement

Novem­ber 2018 Ryden Ref: CAIR0001

Ryden

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Back­ground Con­text The site has been the sub­ject of a num­ber of plan­ning applic­a­tions and per­mis­sions dur­ing the past 20 years. The pro­posed uses included com­mer­cial and res­id­en­tial uses.

In 2016, pre-applic­a­tion con­sulta­tions were under­taken with The High­land Coun­cil in rela­tion to a pro­posed res­id­en­tial devel­op­ment. The ref­er­ence num­ber for these con­sulta­tions was 16/04617/PREAPP.

The writ­ten advice issued by The High­land Coun­cil as part of that pro­cess included the fol­low­ing com­ments: • Res­id­en­tial use of the site would appear to be accept­able in prin­ciple. • Hous­ing devel­op­ment on this site should rein­force and enhance the char­ac­ter of the set­tle­ment, max­im­ising oppor­tun­it­ies for infill. The sup­port­ing inform­a­tion for the even­tu­al applic­a­tion should demon­strate com­pli­ance with this. • Although the pro­pos­al (at pre-applic­a­tion con­sulta­tion stage) accom­mod­ated build­ings over rel­at­ively large scale, these build­ings are seen in the con­text of a steep wooded bank to the rear of the site and, with the Grampi­an Road being a curvature from the south entrance to Aviemore, the pro­posed lay­out would not appear to be overly obtrus­ive. • All rel­ev­ant tech­nic­al stand­ards in rela­tion to access, park­ing, drain­age, water, and flood risk should be met. • The eco­logy and tree cov­er on the site is import­ant and should be con­sidered care­fully as part of the over­all devel­op­ment proposals.

The plan­ning applic­a­tion for a revised scheme was sub­sequently sub­mit­ted, and was called-in by the Cairngorm Nation­al Park Author­ity for con­sid­er­a­tion and determ­in­a­tion. This applic­a­tion was giv­en the ref­er­ence 2017/0198/DET. Dur­ing the con­sid­er­a­tion of the applic­a­tion by the CNPA, the applic­a­tion was sub­ject to a num­ber of amend­ments. How­ever, the applic­a­tion was sub­sequently with­drawn, to pave the way for a fresh application.

The sub­sequent applic­a­tion was also called-in by the CNPA and was giv­en the ref­er­ence 2018/0043/DET. It is this latest applic­a­tion to which this over­view plan­ning state­ment refers. The Cur­rent Applic­a­tion Even although the fresh, amended plan­ning applic­a­tion took on board many of the com­ments and con­sulta­tion responses which were gen­er­ated in rela­tion to the pre­vi­ous applic­a­tion, a num­ber of fur­ther mat­ters have emerged. These can be sum­mar­ised as fol­lows: • The fresh pro­pos­als, although reduced in scale and mass­ing when com­pared to the pre­vi­ous applic­a­tion, still rep­res­ents a visu­al over-devel­op­ment of the site; and • Addi­tion­al work was required in mat­ters of trees and land­scap­ing, par­tic­u­larly on the inter­face between the devel­op­ment site and the trees bey­ond the bound­ary (in the exist­ing TPO area) in order to avoid the cre­ation of an unat­tract­ive bound­ary. As a con­sequence of the com­ments and con­sulta­tions from CNPA as plan­ning author­ity, a revi­sion of the pro­posed scheme has been under­taken. The scale and nature of the pro­posed build­ings has been reduced and the land­scap­ing and tree pro­pos­als sub­stan­tially revised. There have been related design amend­ments regard­ing park­ing, refuse col­lec­tion, etc.

These amend­ments to the exist­ing scheme have been informed by fur­ther sur­vey work, par­tic­u­larly in rela­tion to trees and landscaping.

Fresh plans draw­ings, and a sup­port­ing Design State­ment have been col­lated, pre­pared, and sub­mit­ted by the Kear­ney Don­ald Part­ner­ship, the agent for the applic­a­tion. Ryden has provided pro­fes­sion­al plan­ning advice in rela­tion to the pre­par­a­tion and sub­mis­sion of the amended proposals.

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The key amend­ments can be sum­mar­ised as fol­lows: • Blocks A and C have both been reduced in scale, by a storey in each case. This assists in the visu­al mass­ing of the front­age. The rhythm of the new build­ings, as viewed from Grampi­an Road wheth­er trav­el­ling north or south, is now more appro­pri­ate for this gate­way site. • An import­ant stand of exist­ing trees (three mature Scots Pines), at the south­ern end of the site has now been retained. This is in response to the con­sulta­tion and the site meet­ing under­taken in con­junc­tion with the For­res­try Officers. • The land­scap­ing and tree belt to the rear of the pro­posed devel­op­ment has been redesigned and the retain­ing wall will now be built in short sec­tions to min­im­ise dis­rup­tion to the bank and to the trees on the bank. Status of Amend­ments The amend­ments reduce the scale and nature of the built form, and improve the land­scape set­ting. In addi­tion, trees will now be retained which were pre­vi­ously sched­uled for removal.

This being the case, it is con­sidered that the amend­ments are appro­pri­ate for con­sid­er­a­tion as part of the cur­rent plan­ning applic­a­tion, and do not require the sub­mis­sion of a fresh plan­ning application.

It is accep­ted that the amend­ments mean that the applic­a­tion may require to be re-noti­fied and re- advert­ised. Con­clu­sion The site, which has had a vari­ety of uses over many dec­ades, does not present an attract­ive envir­on­ment for those enter­ing Aviemore (trav­el­ling north) or those leav­ing Aviemore (trav­el­ling south or to the Loch Morlich/​Cairngorm area). It is a site in need of appro­pri­ate development.

As agreed ever since the pre-applic­a­tion stage, the site is suit­able for res­id­en­tial devel­op­ment. The key issues relate to the scale and mass­ing of the devel­op­ment, the dens­ity of devel­op­ment on the site, and the way in which it integ­rates both with the pub­lic realm (to the front of the build­ings) and the wooded area (to the rear of the buildings).

It is sub­mit­ted that the latest revised pro­pos­als (as of Novem­ber 2018) now sat­is­fact­or­ily address all these key issues and that the applic­a­tion is now suit­able for approval.

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2018/0043/DET 28 Apart­ments at Grampi­an Road — Cairngorm Devel­op­ments Lim­ited Forestry Officers Con­sulta­tion Response dated 13 Feb 2019. CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY ÜGH­DAR­RAS PAIRC NAISEANTA Α’ MHON­AIDH RUAIDH Mr Stu­art notes that 57% of the trees on site are pro­posed for remov­al. While this is tech­nic­ally cor­rect in terms of the arith­met­ic, he makes no men­tion of the num­bers for the dif­fer­ent cat­egor­ies of trees. The Arbor­i­cul­tur­al Con­sult­ant, Rum­roy Ltd has tagged and cat­egor­ised all 370 trees on site in line with the recog­nised Brit­ish Stand­ard BS 5837:2012. An ana­lys­is of the dif­fer­ent cat­egor­ies and there­fore the qual­ity and health of the tress on site is required. SUM­MARY OF SUR­VEYED TREES ON SITE TO BS 5837: 2012 42no Trees Cat­egory A Trees 11% of total 119no Trees Cat­egory B Trees 32% of total 203no Trees Cat­egory C Trees 55% of total 6no Trees Cat­egory U Trees 2% of total

43% of the trees sur­veyed on site are cat­egory A or B, leav­ing 57% of the trees sur­veyed being classed as Cor U. This means that more than half the trees on site are classed as hav­ing ​“ser­i­ous, irre­medi­able, struc­tur­al defects” or ​“trees with very lim­ited con­ser­va­tion or oth­er cul­tur­al benefits”.

This does not accord with the pic­ture por­trayed by the Forestry Officer, Land­scape Officer or the Eco­logy Adviser.

Since Rum­roy Ltd pro­duced the Arbor­i­cul­tur­al Report dated the 28^th Octo­ber 2018 our cli­ents have car­ried out a fur­ther review of pos­sible meth­ods to con­struct the retain­ing wall on the site. We are now able to pro­pose a meth­od called a ​“Clutched Pile System”.

This would neg­ate the require­ment for any tem­por­ary works behind the area of the rear wall of the car­ports, as the sheet piles become the rear wall. A 20 tonne 360-degree excav­at­or will form a level area where the block of car­ports is to be loc­ated. This will allow the clutched pile drill rig access to the rear build­ing line of the car­ports to enable the piles to be driv­en into pos­i­tion over the length of the retain­ing wall. This is car­ried out via a vibrat­ory action & would not cause addi­tion­al dis­turb­ance of the land­form to the rear of the retain­ing wall. The retain­ing wall, its found­a­tions and the car port struc­ture are all con­struc­ted from the road side of the wall with min­im­al impact of the bank and the trees on the bank.

This meth­od of con­struct­ing the wall neg­ates the need for excav­a­tions and work­ing space behind the wall and sig­ni­fic­antly addresses the forestry officers’ con­cerns raised in points 2,3,6,7,8,18 and the sum­mary. The 35 trees pre­vi­ously men­tioned as hav­ing con­struc­tion with­in the root pro­tec­tion area now num­ber 3no in total. WE have allowed 500mm behind the retain­ing wall in mak­ing this assess­ment although in real­ity the piles will be inser­ted on the line of the extern­al face of the retain­ing wall.

Indeed, the pro­posed meth­od of con­struct­ing the retain­ing wall will res­ult in a fur­ther 14no being retained. They are tree no’s 113, 146, 155, 156, 159, 184, 185, 195, 241,275,297,298,299 and 312. Of these four­teen trees 4no are cat­egory A and a fur­ther 5no are cat­egory B. This changes the over­all num­bers on the site as 197 being removed and 173 trees being retained.

Sec­tion 5.0 of the Rum­roy Ltd, Arbor­i­cul­tur­al Report refers to Tree Pro­tec­tion prin­ciples. Fur­ther to approv­al of the pro­posed plan­ning applic­a­tion and pri­or to oper­a­tions on site com­men­cing, an Arbor­i­cul­ture Meth­od State­ment (AMS) will require to be pro­duced and agreed with the Cairngorm Park Author­ity and the details out­lined with­in it strictly fol­lowed. This Meth­od State­ment will be the work­ing doc­u­ment which will

incor­por­ate all detail required to pro­tect the trees through­out the dur­a­tion of the imple­ment­a­tion of the phys­ic­al oper­a­tions. We would be con­tent to have this as a con­di­tion of planning.

SUM­MARY OF TREES BEING REMOVED Cat­egory of trees to % of Trees being removed % of tress being removed BS 5837:2012 against total tress on site Cat­egory A 16no trees 8% 4% Cat­egory B 67no trees 34% 18% Cat­egory C 111no trees 56% 30% Cat­egory D 3no trees 2% 1% Trees Retained 47%

Clearly the num­ber of trees pro­posed for remov­al from cat­egor­ies A and B is 83no trees amount­ing to 22% of the total num­ber of trees on site. With­in our pro­pos­als we have indic­ated the plant­ing of 85no nat­ive trees and 1476 shrubs with­in the site. We believe that the new pro­posed plant­ing will com­pensate for the loss of trees with­in the site. The biod­iversity and eco­logy of the site will be trans­formed. The site was formerly a pet­rol filling sta­tion and then a series of busi­ness uses and cur­rently it is largely derel­ict although being used for wild camp­ing with the res­ult­ant issues of human waste and rubbish.

The forestry officer offers com­ments on mat­ters out with forestry issues, namely the soft land­scap­ing pro­pos­als. These com­ments duplic­ate the com­ments from the land­scape and eco­logy advisers. We have pre­vi­ously giv­en our responses to the land­scape and eco­logy consultations.

Our cli­ent is pre­pared to offer fur­ther com­pens­at­ory plant­ing off-site. They own an area of land at Ker­row in Kin­gussie extend­ing to some 5.4acres. The dia­gram below shows the area of ground and we have marked an area with­in this site adja­cent to the small area of wood­land adja­cent to the B9512 which could be planted with up to 200 trees, if this was deemed appro­pri­ate. We con­firm that if this pro­pos­al is not accept­able, they do have oth­er land hold­ings that could be con­sidered in con­junc­tion with the Cairngorm Park Authority.

2/20/2019 Google Maps Mil­it­ary Rd Gen­er­al Wade’s Mil­it­ary Rd A9 A9 A9 https://​www​.google​.com/​m​a​p​s​/​@​5​7​.​0​8​5​3​7​0​9​,​-​4​.​0​3​4​1​5​1​2​,​3​7​6​m​/​d​a​t​a​=​!​3​m​1!1e3 B9152 Google Maps Blue line denotes land under own­er­ship of cli­ent Red line and hatched area denotes the area of sug­ges­ted com­pli­ment­ary tree plant­ing B9152 Google Imagery ©2019 Get­map­ping plc, Map data ©2019 Google 50 m ¹⁄₁

2018/0043/DET 28 Apart­ments at Grampi­an Road — Cairngorm Devel­op­ments Lim­ited CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY UGH­DAR­RAS PAIRC NAISEANTA A’ MHON­AIDH RUAIDH A sum­mary response to the points raised per the latest con­sulta­tion responses for the above: Com­munity Coun­cil let­ter dated 11^th Janu­ary 2019

We are pleased to note the Com­munity Coun­cil accept that the site is suit­able for infill hous­ing. ​“devel­op­ment does not make a pos­it­ive state­ment about Aviemore’s status as a world class resort “

Indeed, we believe that it does. The site is presently an aban­doned brown­field site sub­ject to wild camp­ing and rogue park­ing with all the attend­ant refuse, human waste and debris res­ult­ing. The site is a pos­it­ive eye­sore on enter­ing this ​‘world class resort ​‘and with an accept­ance that hous­ing is a suit­able use, the sub­stan­tial private invest­ment to be made will trans­form this, and along with the mod­ern addi­tion of the Premi­er Inn, sub­stan­tially improve first impres­sions on enter­ing or leav­ing the town. ​“the 4.5 storey state­ment is also a mis­dir­ec­tion on behalf of the developers – the build­ing has 5 hab­it­a­tion floors”

We believe that we are cor­rect when refer­ring to the build­ings being 3.5 and 4.5 storey in height. The Robert J Nai­s­mith book referred to is an accep­ted guide on the archi­tec­ture of build­ings in the Scot­tish coun­tryside. The book gives clear guid­ance on describ­ing the heights and pro­por­tions of build­ing rel­at­ive to storey height and rooms con­tained with­in roof spaces.

There has been no attempt to mis­lead or mis­dir­ect. Blocks A and C have 3 full storeys of accom­mod­a­tion with a mas­ter bed­room suite con­tained with­in the roof space with a slightly raised wall head of 550mm. It is cor­rect to refer to this build­ing as 3.5 storeys. Sim­il­arly blocks B and D are 4 full storeys of accom­mod­a­tion with the mas­ter bed­room suite con­tained with­in the roof space 4.5 storeys in height. The top­most flats in each block are ​“duplex” style flats with the mas­ter bed­room flat on the top floor. The top floor is not a sep­ar­ate apart­ment which is why there is no kitchen/​living/​dining room shown at this level. It is clear from the draw­ings that there is a stair con­nect­ing the two floors.

We would also respect­fully point out that the draw­ings for blocks B and D are cor­rect and not mis­lead­ing. The floor plans are clearly labelled. Bot­tom left – Ground Floor, Bot­tom right- First and Second Floors (these floors are identic­al), Top left — Third Floor, Top right — Fourth Floor

The over­all devel­op­ment now only has 28 no apart­ments in total. This is reflec­ted accur­ately in the pro­posed floor plans. ​“res­id­en­tial flats at Grampi­an Court are 2 storey”

The Grampi­an Court flats closest to Grampi­an Rd are 2 storeys but the rest of the devel­op­ment is 3 storeys in height and built on ground con­sid­er­ably high­er than Grampi­an road level and built with­in the pro­tec­ted wood­land area.

“there are no build­ings along the length of Grampi­an Road that are more than 2.5 storeys high”

We would point out that this state­ment is incor­rect. The build­ings along the length of Grampi­an Road vary sig­ni­fic­antly in height and this fact gives Aviemore part of its char­ac­ter and street scape. The lack of uni­form­ity should be con­sidered a positive.

While the build­ings in the Mac­Don­ald resort do not have a Grampi­an Road address one of the hotels with­in the resort is set back from Grampi­an Road but its grounds come down to the edge of Grampi­an Road. This hotel is clearly seen when trav­el­ling along Grampi­an Road. This hotel is 9 storeys in height.

Fur­ther North along Grampi­an Road, the Cairngorm Hotel is partly 3 storeys high with tra­di­tion­al floor to floor pro­por­tions which give the added height when com­pared to today’s build­ings. There are also a couple of flat­ted devel­op­ments at the north­ern end of Grampi­an Road that are 2.75 storey and 3 storeys in height. ​“the Street Elev­a­tion from Grampi­an Road is a total mis­rep­res­ent­a­tion of what the visu­al impact of the build­ings will be to any­one on Grampi­an Road”

The way we have drawn the elev­a­tions of the build­ings includ­ing the over­all ​“street view” is cor­rect in terms of stand­ard archi­tec­tur­al present­a­tion. We acknow­ledge that the elev­a­tions do not take into account the per­spect­ive of view­ing the build­ing from close by or from fur­ther away. They are how­ever cor­rect in terms of levels and the heights of the build­ings rel­at­ive to the trees on the slope of the bank behind. These draw­ings demon­strate that the pro­posed build­ings are sig­ni­fic­antly lower than the tops of the trees behind. ​“non-com­pli­ance with Policy 5 as it does not ensure that the devel­op­ment con­serves and enhances the dis­tinct­ive char­ac­ter­ist­ics of Aviemore”

The actu­al text of Policy 5 states:

There will be a pre­sump­tion against any devel­op­ment that does not con­serve and enhance the land­scape char­ac­ter and spe­cial qual­it­ies of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park includ­ing wild­ness, and in par­tic­u­lar, the set­ting of the pro­posed development.

Pro­posed devel­op­ment that does not com­ple­ment and enhance the land­scape char­ac­ter of the Park and the set­ting of the pro­posed devel­op­ment will be per­mit­ted only where:

a) any sig­ni­fic­ant adverse effects on the land­scape char­ac­ter of the Park are clearly out­weighed by social or eco­nom­ic bene­fits of nation­al import­ance; and

b) all the adverse effects on the set­ting of the pro­posed devel­op­ment have been min­im­ised and mit­ig­ated through appro­pri­ate sit­ing, lay­out, scale, design and con­struc­tion to the sat­is­fac­tion of the plan­ning authority.

Para­graphs 7.9 to 7.12 then explain how the policy will be applied. The repeated ref­er­ences to ​‘wild­ness’ and ​‘remote­ness’ provide a strong indic­a­tion that it is devel­op­ment sites in such areas that are the real con­cern of the policy.

The applic­a­tion site is an eye­sore. It cur­rently detracts from the set­ting of Aviemore. The exist­ence of the cur­rent unman­aged wood­land hardly com­pensates for the poor appear­ance. To sug­gest that the pro­posed devel­op­ment fails when assessed against the pur­pose and mean­ing of the policy is use the policy in a way which was not intended.

“the devel­op­ment is close to the road and gives a city vista and no good impres­sion of the rur­al aspects of the vil­lage / small town that Aviemore is. A city streets­cape is not apt in Aviemore”

We respect­fully dis­agree with this comment/​observation. The pro­posed devel­op­ment will not cre­ate a ​“city vista”. The oppos­ite side of Grampi­an Road from the pro­posed devel­op­ment will nev­er have any build­ings built on this land as the main rail­way line runs through this site at a lower level than the road. The pro­posed site has unob­struc­ted views to the Cairngorm moun­tains sev­er­al miles dis­tant. This sec­tion of Grampi­an Road will nev­er feel like an urb­an area for this reason.

In terms of street scape again we would sug­gest that Aviemore has great vari­ety in the way that the build­ings on Grampi­an Road relate to the road and the pub­lic pave­ment. Some build­ings are built dir­ectly onto the back edge of the pave­ment, oth­ers are set back a short dis­tance while oth­ers such as the Cairngorm and Premi­er Inn Hotels are well set back suf­fi­cient to have park­ing in front of the buildings.

Our cli­ent was recently devel­op­ing anoth­er site on Grampi­an Road and was giv­en clear guid­ance from the Plan­ning author­ity that the build­ings should address the main road (cre­at­ing a strong sense of street) and the car park­ing should be loc­ated behind the build­ings away from the main street.

We have adop­ted this basic design philo­sophy for this devel­op­ment as we firmly believe this cre­ates a bet­ter street scape that (t) n hav­ing sig­ni­fic­ant areas of car park­ing front­ing onto the main road through Aviemore. ​“the build­ings in the devel­op­ment are dis­pro­por­tion­ate to all oth­er build­ings in Aviemore”

Clearly the build­ing is not dis­pro­por­tion­ate to all oth­er build­ings in Aviemore. There are sev­er­al build­ings with­in the Mac­Don­ald Resort that are a far big­ger in scale than these pro­pos­als. We have already men­tioned that one of the hotels with­in the resort which can be clearly seen from Grampi­an Road is 9 storeys in height. There are at least two oth­er hotels with­in the resort that are 4 (storeys) storeys in height with a full pitch roof above. The scale and mass of these build­ings are sig­ni­fic­antly big­ger than the pro­posed devel­op­ment on Grampi­an Road.

“no afford­able housing”

This is acknow­ledged, but the Com­munity Coun­cil must under­stand that the appro­pri­ate pro­por­tion of afford­able hous­ing would have been only 7 units. The developer has, in agree­ment with The High­land Coun­cil as hous­ing author­ity, trans­lo­cated these units to Slug­gan Drive and doubled the required pro­vi­sion to 14 units. Giv­en the length of time taken to date in pro­cessing this pro­posed devel­op­ment from its ori­gin­al sub­mis­sion, the afford­able pro­vi­sion has been built out and is now fully occu­pied, eas­ing the bur­den of short­age of pro­vi­sion much earli­er than might have been pos­sible otherwise.

We are unable to com­ment on the issues raised by the Com­munity Coun­cil in rela­tion the High­land Coun­cil and CNPA with­in their submission

Eco­logy Adviser dated 21^st Janu­ary 2019

We are pleased note that the Eco­logy Adviser confirms:

A Her­it­age Reg­u­la­tions Apprais­al con­cludes ​“no likely sig­ni­fic­ant effect on caper­cail­lie or to the Spey SAC “. The sig­ni­fic­ance of impact on bats is ” neg­li­gible The sig­ni­fic­ance of impact on squir­rels is ” slight”, in so far as only evid­ence of feed­ing was noted and that no dreys exist.

The sig­ni­fic­ance of impact on breed­ing birds is” negligible “.

In sum­mary there­fore, we may estab­lish that the eco­logy of the site, such as it is, remains unaf­fected by the pro­posed development.

Our sub­mis­sions to date include sub­stan­tial soft land­scape pro­pos­als wherein our land­scape con­sult­ant clearly demon­strates an enhance­ment to the site’s bio-diversity oppor­tun­it­ies with a ​‘nat­ive only ​‘spe­cies selec­tion of 84 trees, 1476 shrubs and sow­ing grassed areas with grass / wild­flower seed mix (10 grass spe­cies and 18 wild­flower spe­cies) offer­ing a won­der­ful oppor­tun­ity to enhance the eco­logy and bio-diversity with­in the site, which will be unre­cog­nis­able from the present brownfield.

The eco­logy adviser would pro­ceed to offer com­ment, bey­ond eco­logy mat­ters, on the land­scape pro­pos­als and would duplic­ate state­ments from the land­scape adviser and forestry officer with regard to tree remov­al and replace­ments. These will be dealt with under the appro­pri­ate con­sulta­tion response. We have taken pro­fes­sion­al advice and guid­ance from our con­sult­ants and do not accept the reser­va­tions expressed by the eco­logy adviser regard­ing suit­ab­il­ity of spe­cies selec­ted, soil sta­bil­ity for plant­ing, or the opin­ion that fur­ther trees are at any risk dur­ing the con­struc­tion process.

Our SUDS pro­pos­als, as have been engin­eer designed, do not require fur­ther open ponds and the sug­ges­tion of swales is not appro­pri­ate for this site.

We firmly believe that our sub­mis­sions, as presen­ted, to trans­form this brown­field site and take it to the level of enhance­ment pro­posed is more than worthy of favour­able consideration.

Land­scape Adviser dated the 15^th Janu­ary 2019 ​“There is replace­ment of the sedum roof to grass mix”

The change from a sedum roof to a grass mix roof is a dir­ect response to a sug­ges­tion from the plan­ning officer. This change allows the roof area to be con­sidered as addi­tion­al extern­al amen­ity space for the res­id­ents. We have allowed for extern­al stair­cases to access this area of roof. Our cli­ents would be con­tent to revert back to a sedum roof if this has more ​“land­scape value”.

“The exist­ing trees on the site are a visu­al con­tinuum of the adjoin­ing Ancient Wood­land and act as a visu­al frame to the ​“soft” entrance to Aviemore”

The cur­rent wood­land is indeed in poor con­di­tion. It has clearly been unman­aged for a num­ber of years and this is reflec­ted in the poor con­di­tion of the wood­land as a whole. The ancient and pro­tec­ted wood­land on the neigh­bour­ing land is also unman­aged and show­ing signs of this lack of man­age­ment. This was observed at the site meet­ing with the forestry officer in Septem­ber 2018.

The cur­rent site (wood­land) is also attract­ing num­bers of wild campers and on the vis­it in Septem­ber 2018 there was clear evid­ence of human waste with­in the wooded area and also signs of camp fires and large amounts of rub­bish being left in the gen­er­al vicinity.

“The devel­op­ment does not respond sens­it­ively to the exist­ing topo­graphy or tree cov­er. The res­ult­ant loss of tress will impact on the visu­al and land­scape character”

The site is rel­at­ively flat in cross sec­tion from Grampi­an road to the base of the hill and then sloped upwards towards the ancient and pro­tec­ted wood­land on the neigh­bour­ing prop­erty. Giv­en this topo­graphy it is clear that the build­ings should be loc­ated on the flat sec­tions of ground min­im­ising the dis­turb­ance of the bank to the rear of the site. This accords with the plan­ning depart­ments pre­vi­ous guid­ance with hav­ing the build­ings to the front of the site and the car park­ing to the rear.

We recog­nise that there is a need to build into the bank with res­ult­ant tree loss, but this has been kept to a min­im­um by accom­mod­at­ing the car park­ing to the rear and not the build­ings. The meth­od of con­struct­ing the retain­ing wall has also been altered to min­im­ise dis­rup­tion to the bank.

As stated in the design brief the trees on the neigh­bour­ing ground which is a pro­tec­ted wood­land, will always be a back drop to the pro­posed devel­op­ment. Due to the rising topo­graphy the tree can­opy is still 7.5m high­er than the highest roof line with­in the devel­op­ment. Along the major­ity of the devel­op­ment the tree can­opy of upwards of 10m high­er than the roof lines.

“The recently approved Premi­er Inn provides a use­ful bench­mark for devel­op­ment along this part of Grampi­an Road”

It is inter­est­ing that the Land­scape Officer sug­gests that the recently con­sen­ted Premi­er Inn should be con­sidered a bench­mark for devel­op­ment in this part of Grampi­an Road. This devel­op­ment for a 60 bed­roomed hotel places the build­ing to the rear of the site with the car park­ing placed to the front between the hotel build­ing and Grampi­an Road. All the park­ing 50 spaces (except the 3 no. Dis­abled spaces) are loc­ated on either side of a single access road run­ning par­al­lel to Grampi­an Road. The approved land­scape draw­ing shows only 10 trees planted with­in the car park­ing zone and this will in no way break up the visu­al impact of a car park. The 18m set­back for the build­ing is wasted with the sit­ing of such a large car park on the pub­lic side of the hotel. This car park with little new land­scap­ing provides the ​“south­ern gate­way” to Aviemore.

“Over devel­op­ment of the site is res­ult­ing in a visu­ally sol­id and dom­in­ant built form that would dom­in­ate the imme­di­ate town­scape and sense of arrival in Aviemore”

The land­scape Officer makes ref­er­ence to over­de­vel­op­ment through­out his con­sulta­tion response. The dens­ity and the scale of devel­op­ment is a mat­ter for the plan­ning officer and not the land­scape officer.

The land­scape officer’s view of the devel­op­ment stems from his opin­ion that the cur­rent trees on the site are of sig­ni­fic­ant qual­ity and that they con­trib­ute to the char­ac­ter of this part of Aviemore. We fun­da­ment­ally dis­agree with this start­ing point and indeed the officer con­tra­dicts his stance by stat­ing ​“In prin­ciple devel­op­ment of the site is accep­ted and needed, as it is cur­rently in poor condition.”

If the wood­land is in poor con­di­tion it there­fore does not mer­it the value that is being attrib­uted to it.

In terms of the pro­posed devel­op­ment being visu­ally sol­id and dom­in­ant build form, we would again dis­agree with this opin­ion expressed by the Land­scape Adviser. The apart­ments have been split into 4no blocks with­in the site cre­at­ing space and visu­al links to the wood­land at the back of the site between each of the blocks. The blocks them­selves have been artic­u­lated to break down the mass of the build­ings avoid­ing large reg­u­lar shaped blocks, like the Premi­er Inn example raised. The flats have cut away bal­conies that accen­tu­ate the corners of the build­ings and the ver­tic­al cir­cu­la­tion ele­ment is set back from the main build­ing mass and fin­ished in a dif­fer­ent mater­i­al to fur­ther artic­u­late this ele­ment and again break­ing down the mass of the building.

This is a dif­fer­ent approach from the recently con­sen­ted Premi­er Inn, with this build­ing being a single rect­an­gu­lar box with only min­im­al façade detail around the top floor windows/​roof junction.

As pre­vi­ously stated, the plan­ning author­ity had pre­vi­ously encour­aged our cli­ent on recent devel­op­ments on Grampi­an Road to have the build­ing towards the front ​“pub­lic” side of the site and have the car park­ing ​“out of sight” to the rear of the site. Indeed, these pro­pos­als have gone fur­ther in terms of integ­rat­ing the car park­ing by build­ing a roof over the major­ity of the car park­ing and cov­er­ing this roof with a ​“green roof”.

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY 2018/0043/DET UGH­DAR­RAS PAIRC NAISEANTA A’ MHON­AIDH RUAIDH CAIRNGORM RES­ID­EN­TIAL Ltd. HOUS­ING DEVEL­OP­MENT 28no APART­MENTS AT GRAMPI­AN ROAD, AVIEMORE MIL­LET DESIGN STATE­MENT Octo­ber 2016 Updated May 2017 Updated Nov 2017 Updated Jan 2018 Updated April 2018 Updated Nov 2018 Updated Nov 2018

CON­TENTS 1.0 Back­ground Inform­a­tion 1.1 Name of Scheme 1.2 Applic­ant 1.3 Architect/​developer/​agents/​advisers, etc. 1.4 Descrip­tion of cli­ent brief 1.5 Date DESIGN STATE­MENT HOUS­ING DEVEL­OP­MENT — 28no. APARTM­NETS GRAMPI­AN ROAD, AVIEMORE 4.0 Design Prin­ciples 4.1 Nation­al Guid­ance 4.2 Nation­al Park Devel­op­ment Plan Design Policies 4.2.1 Policy 1 — New Hous­ing Devel­op­ment 4.2.2 Policy 3 — Sus­tain­able Design 4.2.3 Policy 10 – Resources 4.2.4 Policy 11 — Developer Con­tri­bu­tions 4.3 Sup­ple­ment­ary plan­ning guid­ance 4.4 Site Spe­cif­ic Devel­op­ment Briefs 4.5 Con­sulta­tions 2.0 Site Details 2.1 Loc­a­tion and Site Plan 2.2 Site Descrip­tion- physical/​environmental char­ac­ter­ist­ics 2.3 Site His­tory 5.0 Design Solu­tions 2.4 Own­er­ship 2.5 Sur­round­ing uses 5.1 Lay­out 2.6 Site Invest­ig­a­tions 5.2 Con­text 2.7 Infrastructure/​services 5.3 Streets and Spaces 5.4 Access­ib­il­ity 5.5 Safety and Secur­ity 5.6 Sus­tain­ab­il­ity 3.0 Site and Area Apprais­al 3.1 Con­text 3.2 Iden­tity 3.3 Con­nec­tions 5.7 Land­scape 5.8 Scale and Mix 5.9 Details and Mater­i­als 5.10 Main­ten­ance K P kear­ney don­ald part­ner­ship chartered archi­tects & prin­cip­al designer

1.0 BACK­GROUND INFORM­A­TION 1.1 Name of the Scheme 28no. New Build Apart­ments, Grampi­an Road (B9152), Aviemore. 1.2 Applic­ant Cairngorm Res­id­en­tial Ltd 1.3 Architect/​developer/​agents/​advisers, etc. Kear­ney Don­ald Part­ner­ship — Archi­tects and Prin­cip­al design­ers. Camer­on and Ross, Con- sul­t­ing Engin­eers — roads engin­eer­ing, sur­face water and foul drain­age. Rum­roy Lim­ited for squir­rel sur­vey, tree sur­vey and tree con­straints plan, Ryden — Plan­ning Con­sult­ant 1.4 Descrip­tion of cli­ent brief The client’s brief was to devel­op the vacant land adja­cent to Grampi­an Road (B9152), the main road into Aviemore from the South. The land also includes the site of the cur­rent Ac- tive Out­door Pur­suits shop (now demol­ished). The brief was to design high qual­ity res­id­en­tial units for sale and also to include the 25% alloc­a­tion for afford­able homes. The afford­able hous­ing ele­ment was later omit­ted from the scheme and the whole of the site was to accom­mod­ate private apart­ments for sale. There is a sep­ar­ate doc­u­ment out­lining the back­ground and agree­ments reached regard­ing the trans-loc­a­tion of the afford­able hous­ing ele­ment to anoth­er site with­in Aviemore. 1.5 Date This report was pre­pared Octo­ber 2016 and then fur­ther updated in May 2017, Novem­ber 2017, Janu­ary 2018 and again in April 2018. There is a fur­ther update Novem­ber 2018 DESIGN STATE­MENT HOUS­ING DEVEL­OP­MENT — 28no. APARTM­NETS GRAMPI­AN ROAD, AVIEMORE K P kear­ney don­ald part­ner­ship chartered archi­tects & prin­cip­al designer

2.0 SITE DETAILS 2.1 Loc­a­tion and Site avan Park 5 8 6 9 Wooded Area Grampi­an Court 7 10 14 11 12 15 16 SYHA 17 High­land Lodges 18 19 Wooded Area Harkals Grampi­an Road B9152 Dal­faber Road NORTH DESIGN STATE­MENT HOUS­ING DEVEL­OP­MENT — 28no. APARTM­NETS GRAMPI­AN ROAD, AVIEMORE Fer­rb­ank Ter­mayne The River House Spey Cot­tage FBS K く P kear­ney don­ald part­ner­ship chartered archi­tects & prin­cip­al designer

DESIGN STATE­MENT HOUS­ING DEVEL­OP­MENT — 28no. APARTM­NETS GRAMPI­AN ROAD, AVIEMORE 2.2 Descrip­tion — physical/​environmental char­ac­ter­ist­ics The site is loc­ated with­in Aviemore town centre and runs par­al­lel to Grampi­an Road (B9152), which is the main road run­ning North South through Aviemore.

The site is largely vacant ground since the clos­ure of a pet­rol filling sta­tion in 1999. There was how­ever one build­ing on the site being used as an out­door sports goods retail­er. This ten­ant how­ever indic­ated that they were not renew­ing their lease and moved to oth­er prem- ises with­in the Badenoch Area. This build­ing has recently been demol­ished. Adja­cent to the road and run­ning par­al­lel to the road the ground is rel­at­ively flat for an aver- age dis­tance of some 30m before the land rises in elev­a­tion to the rear of the site. There is a fall of some 3.5m along the length of the site fall­ing northwards.

This bank run­ning the full length of the site is heav­ily wooded with pre­dom­in­ately Scots Pine and Birch trees. Bey­ond the site bound­ary the wood­land con­tin­ues to the north­w­est with a sub­stan­tial wood­land area that is cur­rently pro­tec­ted with Tree Pre­ser­va­tion Order no HRC 42. 2.3 Site His­tory The site is cur­rently dis­used with the Act­ive Out­door Pur­suits shop pre­vi­ously loc­ated in the North­ern Sec­tion of the site hav­ing vacated their premises earli­er this year. The site was pre­vi­ously occu­pied by a pet­rol filling sta­tion. This was closed in 1999.

A sec­tion of the site had plan­ning per­mis­sion for a mixed use devel­op­ment of 8no apart- ments and retail units. The ref­er­ence num­ber for this applic­a­tion was 04/00283/OUTBS. 2.4 Own­er­ship The site is cur­rently owned by the applic­ant, Cairngorm Res­id­en­tial Ltd. 2.5 Sur­round­ing Uses The imme­di­ate sur­round­ing area con­tains a num­ber of dif­fer­ent uses includ­ing a food take- away, res­taur­ant, res­id­en­tial, church and tour­ism uses.

The rail­way runs par­al­lel to Grampi­an road on the oth­er side of the road.

There has also been a recent Plan­ning con­sent giv­en for a new hotel on the site of a former pet­rol filling sta­tion on the oppos­ite side of Grampi­an Road a short dis­tance to the south- east of this site. (Plan­ning Ref 16/04669/FUL) 2.6 Site Invest­ig­a­tions To date a num­ber of sur­veys and site invest­ig­a­tions have taken place. A full topo­graph­ic­al sur­vey of the site has been com­pleted includ­ing the detailed pos­i­tion­ing of all the trees on the site.

A full tree sur­vey has been com­pleted and this sur­vey will be sub­mit­ted with the detailed plan­ning applic­a­tion. A sur­vey for red squir­rels has also been car­ried out and will be sub- mit­ted as part of the detailed plan­ning applic­a­tion. Nest­ing bird and bat sur­veys have also been car­ried out and reports sub­mit­ted with the plan­ning applic­a­tion. An earli­er Soil Gas Sur­vey Report pre­pared by DG Envir­on­ment­al will also be included. K P kear­ney don­ald part­ner­ship chartered archi­tects & prin­cip­al designer

2.7 Infra­struc­ture and Ser­vices Water mains and power are loc­ated with­in the site. Con­nec­tions to the foul drain­age and the road net­work are avail­able at the edge of the site.

Roads A new access to the site will be formed off Grampi­an Road (B9152). This is the main ac- cess road through Aviemore. The new junc­tion to this road will be formed to cur­rent High- land Coun­cil, Roads and Trans­port Guidelines for New Devel­op­ments. Vis­ib­il­ity splays com­men­sur­ate with the 30 miles per hour speed lim­it can be achieved.

Ini­tial con­sulta­tions with Scot­tish Water have indic­ated that there is capa­city with­in the loc­al water sup­ply and waste