Item5Appendix2RepresentationObjections20190222PPP

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 5 Appendix 2 24/01/2020

AGENDA ITEM 5

APPENDIX 2

2019/0222/PPP

REP­RES­ENT­A­TIONS

OBJEC­TIONS

From: ePlan­ning To: [redac­ted] Sub­ject: Plan­ning applic­a­tion Ref 19/03017/PIP Date: 20 July 2019 22:27:55

Dear Sirs

I refer to the above plan­ning applic­a­tion for the erec­tion of 7 houses on land NE of 4 Lettoch Road, Nethy Bridge. I am the own­er of the prop­erty at 2 Lettoch Road, Nethy Bridge.

The pro­posed devel­op­ment is out­with the vil­lage bound­ary and the road is unsuit­able for more hous­ing in the area and I under­stand that when the houses on Lyn­stock Park were built, the plan­ning depart­ment insisted that the road remained as a single track.

How­ever, my main objec­tion to the pro­posed build of 7 houses is that it will des­troy a wooded area which is full of wild­life. This after­noon, I have seen sev­er­al red squir­rels, a hedge­hog and many birds. There is evid­ence of deer and pheas­ants in the area and pine­martins are reg­u­lar vis­it­ors. Caper­cail­lie have been heard in the area and their hab­it­at is very pre­cious. The area has many old fir trees which will require to be des­troyed with the development.

I am in favour of house devel­op­ment but there are many oth­er parts of the vil­lage which could be developed with less dam­age to our nat­ur­al envir­on­ment. This is part of the Cairngorm Nation­al Park and this devel­op­ment is not to be recom­men­ded by yourselves.

I would urge you to reject this application.

Yours sin­cerely

Alec Carstairs 4 Lettoch Road Nethy Bridge PH25 3EJ

Roy Turn­bull Tornis­car Nethy Bridge Inverness-shire, PH25 3ED Scotland

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity The Square Grant­own on Spey

19^th August 2019

Dear Sir

Plan­ning Applic­a­tion 2019_0222_PPP | Erec­tion of sev­en houses | Land 125M NE Of 4 Lettoch Road Nethy Bridge.

I wish to object to the above plan­ning applic­a­tion for the fol­low­ing reasons:

1. The Applic­a­tion State­ment, 1852911 claims that ​“Our pro­pos­al accords with the policies of the Loc­al Plan”. That is not true.

Indeed, the applic­a­tion is con­trary to the pro­vi­sions of the adop­ted CNPA Loc­al Plan, in that:

The site pro­posed is not alloc­ated for devel­op­ment with­in the adop­ted 2015 CNPA Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan, nor is it pro­posed to be alloc­ated in the Draft 2020 CNPA Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan, pub­lished earli­er this year.

• Moreover, the site pro­posed is out­with the set­tle­ment bound­ary, but not sep­ar­ate from that set­tle­ment in that it forms a lin­ear exten­sion to the set­tle­ment: i.e. the pro­posed devel­op­ment would indubit­ably be with­in the Nethy Bridge set­tle­ment, but it would also be out­with the set­tle­ment bound­ary as defined in the adop­ted LDP. Again, this is the case not only with the adop­ted CNPA Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2015 but also in the Draft CNPA Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2020.

• Thus the applic­a­tion is con­trary to Policy 1 of the adop­ted 2015 LDP, which states,

“Set­tle­ment bound­ar­ies indic­ate the extent to which iden­ti­fied set­tle­ments may expand dur­ing the next five years. All new hous­ing devel­op­ments with­in set­tle­ments should be con­tained with­in these boundaries.”

Like­wise, the Draft CNPA Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2020, Policy 1, states: ​“Pro­pos­als for hous­ing will be sup­por­ted where they are loc­ated: a) on an iden­ti­fied alloc­ated site; or b) with­in an iden­ti­fied set­tle­ment bound­ary, neither of which con­di­tions are sat­is­fied in this application.

It appears that the applic­ant is again wish­ing to sidestep nor­mal plan­ning pro­ced­ures whereby land is first alloc­ated for poten­tial devel­op­ment dur­ing the pro­cess of pro­du­cing the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan via the Main Issues Report. The Scot­tish Plan­ning Policy (p.2) emphas­ises the pre­sump­tion in favour of decisions being plan-led wherever possible:

“The [Town and Coun­try Plan­ning (Scot­land)] 1997 Act requires plan­ning applic­a­tions to

be determ­ined in accord­ance with the devel­op­ment plan unless mater­i­al con­sid­er­a­tions indic­ate otherwise.”

In con­sid­er­ing wheth­er there are mater­i­al con­sid­er­a­tions that are suf­fi­cient to over­come the above pre­sump­tion against grant­ing plan­ning con­sent in this case, the fol­low­ing assess­ment of the situ­ation from High­land Region­al Council’s First Draft Loc­al Plan for Badenoch and Strath­spey, March 1991, is ever more pertinent:

“… con­cern is emer­ging about the rate and scale of change in estab­lished vil­lages. Unsym­path­et­ic cram­ming and expan­sion of com­munit­ies is erod­ing their char­ac­ter and set­ting, threat­en­ing to over­whelm facil­it­ies, or cre­at­ing imbal­ances in the social structure.”

Since that time, more than 180 houses have been built in the Nethy Bridge set­tle­ment area (fig­ures from High­land Coun­cil), which many would con­tend force­fully illus­trates that HRC assess­ment of the ongo­ing prob­lems of too rap­id, and appar­ently end­less, growth of settlements.

1. Land­scape and Amenity

The Applic­a­tion State­ment, 1852911 claims that The pro­pos­al will res­ult in a nat­ur­al expan­sion of the exist­ing estab­lished devel­op­ment adja­cent to exist­ing houses. On the con­trary, there is noth­ing ​“nat­ur­al” about extend­ing hous­ing into nat­ive wood­land along a delight­ful and quiet coun­try lane that is used for peace­ful walks by loc­als and vis­it­ors alike. This pro­posed devel­op­ment is more akin to the scourge of rib­bon devel­op­ment that has long been regarded as an undesir­able aspect of poor rur­al plan­ning. For example, Cir­cu­lar No. ²⁴⁄₁₉₈₅ Devel­op­ment in the Coun­tryside and Green Belts, ( https://www2.gov.scot/Publications/1985/09/circular-24 – 1985 ) states, Para 3, (ii). ​“Urb­an sprawl and, in par­tic­u­lar, [ … ] rib­bon devel­op­ment should be avoided.” It needs hardly to be said that stand­ards of rur­al plan­ning estab­lished over thirty years ago, long before nation­al parks were estab­lished in Scot­land, should be strictly upheld with­in what should be regarded as Scotland’s premi­er Nation­al Park.

The pro­posed devel­op­ment con­sti­tutes a lin­ear road­side exten­sion of over 200 metres along a single car­riage­way minor rur­al road that the High­land Coun­cil Trans­port Plan­ning team recom­mend would need to be widened to a 5.5 metre car­riage­way with a 2 metre wide ker­bed foot­way on the devel­op­ment side, accom­pan­ied by street light­ing. In oth­er words, this devel­op­ment would trans­form a land­scape con­sist­ing of a sig­ni­fic­ant length of a rur­al road, bounded by semi-nat­ur­al and fairly mature pine wood­land on one side, which is a char­ac­ter­ist­ic land­scape of the park that is of value, to a sub­urb­an streets­cape of much lower value. That such a trans­form­a­tion in terms of land­scape and amen­ity should occur without due con­sid­er­a­tion via the LDP devel­op­ment pro­cess in uncon­scion­able, and is clearly not out­weighed by social or eco­nom­ic bene­fits of nation­al import­ance. In this respect, one of the the reas­ons for refus­al giv­en for the pre­vi­ous applic­a­tion on this site stands undi­min­ished, viz:

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.

1. Wood­land Removal

The pro­posed devel­op­ment site con­sists of wood­land, mainly of fairly mature Scots pine, with some fine

vet­er­an pines, and a few mature goat wil­lows. The Ord­nance Sur­vey 25 inch to the mile Sheet XLVI.16, which was sur­veyed in 1867, shows that the area was then wood­land, as do all sub­sequent OS maps, show­ing that the wood­land char­ac­ter of the site is long-stand­ing: this is import­ant, since long-stand­ing wood­lands are gen­er­ally rich­er in flora and fauna than recently estab­lished woods.

Scot­tish Plan­ning Policy (Wood­land) and the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Policy on Con­trol of Wood­land Remov­al are rel­ev­ant mater­i­al con­sid­er­a­tions in this case. The Scot­tish Government’s policy on con­trol of wood­land remov­al states that wood­land remov­al should be allowed only where it would achieve ​“sig­ni­fic­ant and clearly defined addi­tion­al pub­lic bene­fits,” which clearly is not so in this pro­pos­al, par­tic­u­larly as across the road is a site iden­ti­fied for hous­ing devel­op­ment in the draft CNPA LDP 2020 that could eas­ily accom­mod­ate any such ​“pub­lic bene­fits” in the form of afford­able hous­ing that may be iden­ti­fied. This reflects the Scot­tish Government’s pos­i­tion as out­lined in its intro­duc­tion to its Wood­land remov­al policy (http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Business-Industry/Energy/Infrastructure/Energy-Consents/Guidance/ Wood­land-remov­al ). This indic­ates that, should the applic­ant decide to appeal a refus­al of plan­ning con­sent on this site, Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment Report­ers would be unlikely to grant such an appeal.

The Applic­a­tion State­ment, 1852911 dis­misses this wood­land as a 田om­mer­cial plant­a­tion., a char­ac­ter­isa­tion that tries to min­im­ise the biod­iversity and land­scape value of the wood­land. It is more use­fully described as high qual­ity nat­ive wood­land, as the CNPA Eco­logy Report cor­rectly recog­nises, and for which the con­straint that 鍍here is a strong pre­sump­tion against the remov­al of nat­ive wood­land with high biod­iversity value clearly applies.

1. Per­ver­sion of the CNPA Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2020 The cur­rent Draft CNPA LDP 2020 includes an alloc­a­tion (H1 Lettoch Road, Indic­at­ive Res­id­en­tial Capa­city: 20 units) that was con­sul­ted upon on the under­stand­ing that the present site for sev­en houses was no longer effect­ive and that there­fore the H1 Lettoch Road site was the only hous­ing alloc­a­tion in the imme­di­ate vicin­ity. Grant­ing con­sent for sev­en dwell­ings on the oth­er side of the road from the H1 site would fun­da­ment­ally alter the plan­ning envir­on­ment of H1 and would require either that the pub­lic con­sulta­tion with­in the LDP pro­cess should be re-vis­ited with respect to H1 Lettoch Road (which would appear to be impossible) or that the Scot­tish Report­ers exam­in­a­tion into the LDP would con­clude that the H1 site had not been prop­erly con­sul­ted upon and was there­fore inval­id, with pos­sible implic­a­tions for judi­cial review were were the Report­ers not to take appro­pri­ate action.

2. Oth­er Con­sid­er­a­tions Pages 188 to 191 of the adop­ted Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan provide inform­a­tion rel­ev­ant to devel­op­ments with­in the Nethy Bridge settlement.

Para 38.4 p. 188 states devel­op­ments ​“should be under­taken in a way which com­ple­ments the sens­it­ive wood­land set­ting of the vil­lage”. To com­ple­ment means to com­plete or to make whole: it is an improve­ment for some­thing that in itself is incom­plete. Para. 38.5 p.188 again emphas­ises the require­ment for new devel­op­ment to ​“ensure the qual­ity of sur­round­ing wood­land, and sens­it­ive valu­able hab­it­ats is not com­prom­ised. This should include improve­ments to the wood­land set­ting and wood­land struc­ture for Nethy Bridge” The Wood­land Trust has high­lighted the poten­tial dam­aging impacts on the eco­logy of wood­lands caused by adja­cent built devel­op­ments. It found there are five main impacts:

• chem­ic­al effects from fer­til­isers and pesti­cides spread­ing by leach­ing or aer­i­al drift; • dis­turb­ance to and pred­a­tion of wild­life, caus­ing lower breed­ing suc­cess and pop­u­la­tion decline; • dump­ing of garden waste and rub­bish, lead­ing to inva­sion of the wood­land by non-nat­ive plants;

• frag­ment­a­tion; • and cumu­lat­ive effects. (Report: ​“Neigh­bours from Hell”, Wood­land Trust, 2012). In short, build­ing houses in nat­ive wood­land des­troys that part of the wood­land built upon, and dam­ages much of the rest. Build­ing of houses in these wood­lands does not in any way“complement the sens­it­ive wood­land set­ting of the vil­lage”, and it severely com­prom­ises the qual­ity of sur­round­ing wood­land, and the sens­it­ive valu­able hab­it­ats that it con­tains. The pro­posed devel­op­ment is there­fore con­trary to the object­ives for Nethy Bridge laid out in the adop­ted Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan.

Finally, this applic­a­tion for con­vert­ing a 渡at­ive wood­land with high biod­iversity value into a hous­ing site out­with the adop­ted LDP alloc­a­tions comes in the year in which i) the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment has declared a Cli­mate Emer­gency and a tar­get of net zero car­bon emis­sions by 2045 fol­low­ing dire warn­ings from the IPCC ​“Spe­cial Report on Glob­al Warm­ing of 1.5°C approved by gov­ern­ments” see: https://​www​.ipcc​.ch/​sr15/

ii) The Roy­al Soci­ety and the Roy­al Academy of Engin­eer­ing pub­lished a Report on Green­house Gas Remov­al in the UK see, https://​roy​also​ci​ety​.org/​t​o​p​i​c​s​-​p​o​l​i​c​y​/​p​r​o​j​e​c​t​s​/​g​r​e​e​n​h​o​u​s​e​-​g​a​s​-​r​e​m​oval/ ​‚which states that amongst the 適ey Actions. required for the UK to achieve net zero are to ​“Pur­sue rap­id ramp-up of forest­a­tion, hab­it­at res­tor­a­tion, and soil car­bon sequest­ra­tion, across large UK land-areas.” iii) The Inter­gov­ern­ment­al Sci­ence-Policy Plat­form on Biod­iversity and Eco­sys­tem Ser­vices (IPBES) (see https://​www​.ipbes​.net/​a​s​s​e​s​s​m​e​n​t​-​r​e​p​o​r​t​s/ldr ) has issued fur­ther dire warn­ings con­cern­ing the loss of glob­al biod­iversity. The Chair of IPBES, Pro­fess­or Robert Wat­son, states that the IPBES report will ​“delve more deeply than any­thing before into the causes of nature col­lapse, chief among which is the con­ver­sion of forests, wet­lands and oth­er wild land­scapes into ploughed fields, dam reser­voirs and con­crete cit­ies. Three-quar­ters of the world’s land sur­face has been severely altered, accord­ing to the leaked draft. Human­ity is also decim­at­ing the liv­ing sys­tems on which we depend by emit­ting car­bon diox­ide and spread­ing invas­ive species.”

All of the above urgent and author­it­at­ive reports relate dir­ectly to the ques­tion of wheth­er it is now appro­pri­ate under any cir­cum­stances for biod­i­verse rich and car­bon sequest­rat­ing hab­it­ats, such as nat­ive wood­lands, to be sac­ri­ficed for devel­op­ment. That such should occur in a Nation­al Park, on an ad hoc basis on land not alloc­ated for devel­op­ment, and adja­cent to anoth­er pro­posed devel­op­ment that can eas­ily accom­mod­ate all loc­al demand, would be unconscionable.

Yours sin­cerely, Roy Turnbull.