Item5Appendix3BObjections20200201DETHutsCrathie

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 5 Appendix 3B 27/08/2021

AGENDA ITEM 5

APPENDIX 3B

2020/0201/DET

REP­RES­ENT­A­TIONS OBJECTIONS

CNPA Plan­ning Sup­port Team 14 The Square Grant­own-on-Spey PH26 3HG

Helena Crath­ie Bal­later AB35 5UL

1 Septem­ber 2020

Dear Sir/​Madam

Erec­tion of 18 Huts, 4 Com­post Toi­lets and Asso­ci­ated Access, Car Park­ing and Land­scap­ing To The North and North East of Tom­idhu, Crath­ie Ballater

As the nearest per­man­ent res­id­ent, these com­ments and objec­tions are derived from imme­di­ate prox­im­ity and from more gen­er­al loc­al exper­i­ence. Liv­ing in Crath­ie for the past thirty-eight years with sev­en­teen years as Man­ager at Roy­al Loch­nagar Dis­til­lery, and now at Helena, my per­son­al involve­ment now is the impact the Inver­cauld pro­pos­als will have on the self-cater­ing units which I have built, and which are only a few feet from the track which provides the access

Essen­tially, I am con­cerned with the way in which a small scarcely pop­u­lated area would be trans­formed, and with the unsched­uled, but unmen­tioned risks. In mini­ature form it seems to be the impos­i­tion of a new town but without the respons­ib­il­ity, and restric­tions which the lar­ger mod­el entails.

For example, the assump­tion that the users of the new huts will take their rub­bish home with them, and that no use will be made of the exist­ing bins at Tom­idhu. A hope­ful and optim­ist­ic view of the tran­si­ent occu­pi­ers but, unfor­tu­nately, with no means of com­pli­ance or confirmation.

Then there is the mat­ter of dens­ity. At peak times how many people will be in the huts? How many cars will there be? How much traffic will there be on the exist­ing track? At the moment there is prac­tic­ally none, and vis­it­ors, their chil­dren and dogs, can safely walk and play.

The track is of par­tic­u­lar con­cern. It is not a road, and there can be dif­fi­culties in winter. In fact it can be blocked for sev­er­al days at a time by snow, and at oth­er times ice makes it

dif­fi­cult if not impossible. New Hut­ters would have to walk up and leave their cars on our exist­ing properties.

On the more gen­er­al level I assume the Police are con­sid­er­ing the secur­ity aspects of so many unknown vis­it­ors dur­ing the Roy­al season.

Also on a gen­er­al level I won­der wheth­er Inver­cauld, with hun­dreds of acres at their dis­pos­al, have con­sidered adopt­ing Norway’s policy where huts are sited in remote areas?

At the moment their pro­pos­als are not a good idea and I strongly object.

Yours faith­fully

A.J. Skakles

Dear Ms Crerar, 16 Janu­ary 2021

CNPA Plan­ning Ref ²⁰²⁰⁄₀₂₀₁, Pro­pos­al by Gal­braith for 18 Huts, 4 Com­post Toi­lets and Asso­ci­ated Access, Car Park­ing and Land­scap­ing Land To The North And North East of Tom­idhu Crath­ie Bal­later Aberdeenshire

In my unanswered email to Coun­cil­lor Black­ett, (copy to the CNPA) on 26 Octo­ber I referred to the inac­curacies con­tained in the Screen­ing Report. I again must draw your atten­tion to inac­curacies in the latest sub­mis­sions on behalf of Inver­cauld Estates.

Crath­ie Hutter’s Manual

Map marked Crath­ie Hut Site – Points of Interest

1. Baker/​Café — INCORRECT
2. Café INCOR­RECT

Nat­ur­al Envir­on­ment of the Wider Area The Crath­ie Huts are loc­ated next to the Crath­ie Wood of SSSI — INCOR­RECT Huts 1 – 12 are out­with the SSSI, huts 13 – 18 are with­in the SSSI

Wood Burn­ing Stoves These are a threat to lung and heart health. They emit harm­ful air pol­lut­ants and fine particles that can enter the lungs and the blood­stream. The pro­pos­al to have eight­een huts pro­du­cing highly car­ci­no­gen­ic diox­ins is cer­tainly not desirable.

Many safety codes require stoves to be one metre away from fur­niture, and oth­er items. Will the huts be able to com­ply with this?

Not quite a tome, but it appears that the Hutter’s Manu­al will be the defin­it­ive answer to all the con­cerns raised by the Object­ors. Tak­ing one item in the manu­al, page four of The Crath­ie Hut­ting site – ​‘there will be no loss of amen­ity for neigh­bour­ing prop­er­ties through noise, odours or nuis­ance.’ How on earth can this be stated, how will this be policed?

We are in the situ­ation just now where politi­cians, health care pro­fes­sion­als who are mak­ing law, and provid­ing guid­ance, con­stantly flout or bend the law. Celebrit­ies, foot­ball play­ers are con­stantly in the press for ignor­ing the Cov­id-19 law. How there­fore, will The Crath­ie Hutter’s Manu­al ensure we have law abid­ing Hut­ters adher­ing to the 22 points listed?

Inver­cauld is at pains to state how they will pro­tect the envir­on­ment, no men­tion of loc­al res­id­ents how­ever. The simple answer is to loc­ate the pro­posed huts at the exist­ing Inver­cauld Estate hut­ting site on the river bank below the North Deeside road approx­im­ately two miles from Crathie.

This spa­cious site is ideally suited for fur­ther huts. No tree felling, no car park con­struc­tion, no intru­sion into the SSSI, envir­on­ment pro­tec­ted, and Crath­ie remains a nice peace­ful place. Con­sid­er­ably less expense for Inver­cauld as well.

Alistair Skakles Helena Crath­ie AB35 5UL

CNPA Plan­ning Ref: 2020/0201/DET Erec­tion of 18 Huts, 4 Com­post Toi­lets and Asso­ci­ated Access, Car Park­ing and Land­scap­ing | Land to the North And North East Of Tom­idhu Crath­ie Bal­later Aberdeenshire

I am a res­id­ent of Crath­ie, liv­ing south of the river, with­in walk­ing dis­tance of the pro­posed devel­op­ment area. I wish to object to the above pro­pos­al and have the fol­low­ing com­ments to make on doc­u­ments provided by the applicant:

DESIGN STATE­MENT 1.Introduction 1.1 Inver­cauld Estate extends to just over 100,000 acres…..the vis­it­or exper­i­ence is import­ant to the Estate…. Anoth­er aspect to the vis­it­or exper­i­ence is hut­ting, with 13 huts presently loc­ated on Inver­cauld Estate, all in the Crath­ie area.

I believe these huts are mostly situ­ated below the A93, along the river bank about 4km east of Crath­ie vil­lage, in an area with no houses, screened by trees from the road, and so well hid­den that their loc­a­tion is unknown even to some res­id­ents of the area. Neither the dens­ity nor the loc­a­tion of these huts is com­par­able with the pro­posed development.

2 Hut­ting in Scot­land 2.1 In many European coun­tries hut­ting is well-established……For example, Nor­way has 500,000 huts for a pop­u­la­tion the same as Scot­land – we have around 600 huts. Nor­way has a sim­il­ar size pop­u­la­tion to Scot­land, but a land­mass five times greater.

2.7 In recent years, Plan­ning per­mis­sion has been gran­ted for huts by many of Scotland’s Plan­ning Author­it­ies. Approved devel­op­ments include:- a 13 hut pilot pro­ject at Saline in Fife,…..15 huts at Falk­land in Fife, 16 huts at Camp Wood in South Lanarkshire.

These three devel­op­ments, as can be seen from maps and satel­lite imagery, are all in areas of wood­land, or former forestry plant­a­tion, well away from com­munit­ies or dwell­ings. In con­trast, the pro­posed devel­op­ment at Tom­idhu is adja­cent to the homes in the east part of Crath­ie and does not appear to con­form to the ​‘back to nature’ eth­os of hutting.

3 The Site 3.1 … Oth­er pos­it­ive factors were repla­cing the exist­ing cara­vans with sens­it­ively designed struc­tures……. Under Hut Design, the pro­posed huts are described as being ​‘some­thing more play­ful than a garden shed and more func­tion­al than a folly’ and ​‘Nestled among the woods, the huts will fea­ture dis­tinct­ive round win­dows. This bird­box-like appearance …….’ .

Eight­een of these odd struc­tures will look more incon­gru­ous amongst the nat­ive birch and pine wood­land than the present three groups of two cara­vans. The applic­a­tion states the 6 cara­vans are ​‘rather old and semi-dilap­id­ated’. Some are indeed old, but most have been well main­tained by their own­ers and are not semi- dilapidated.

3.2 The site is on the east­ern edge of the set­tle­ment of Crath­ie, on the north side of the A93.

Refor­est­ing Scotland’s Thou­sand Huts cam­paign has pro­duced ​‘New Hut­ting Devel­op­ments: good prac­tice guid­ance on the plan­ning, devel­op­ment and man­age­ment of Huts and hut sites’. Under ​‘Sit­ing’ it advises …’care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion must be giv­en to poten­tial impacts on the envir­on­ment and exist­ing communities…..For example, will it have a neg­at­ive effect on the cur­rent pat­tern of the wider community’s enjoy­ment of the site?’

The east­ern half of the small set­tle­ment of Crath­ie north of the A93 con­sists of a cluster of 11 houses. The pro­posed devel­op­ment of 18 huts will be great­er than the num­ber of homes. The ​‘fam­il­ies, indi­vidu­als and their friends’ using the huts could, at any one time, greatly out­num­ber the res­id­ents who live nearby. The hut­ters will not be con­fined to the lim­its of the hut­ting devel­op­ment. The pri­vacy of the res­id­ents is likely to be affected and their enjoy­ment of the present unres­tric­ted access to the walks in the wood­land will be cur­tailed by the devel­op­ment. There will be a neg­at­ive impact on the cur­rent pat­tern of the exist­ing community’s enjoy­ment of the site.

It (the site) is largely in an area of Ancient Wood­land, as noted in the Ancient Wood­land Invent­ory of Scot­land, but includes a fringe of Crath­ie Woods, a Site of Spe­cial Sci­entif­ic Interest.

• Scot­tish Plan­ning Policy iden­ti­fies ​‘ancient wood­land as an import­ant and irre­place­able nat­ur­al resource that should be pro­tec­ted and enhanced’
• Scot­tish Nat­ur­al Heritage’s descrip­tion of Crath­ie Woods SSSI states ​‘it is the the finest example of upland birch-pine­wood on Deeside and one of the finest in Scotland’

Even if the pro­posed struc­tures are to be built with ​‘a light touch’, the increase in people pres­sure will have an impact on the veget­a­tion in these pro­tec­ted areas. Ancient wood­land is con­sidered irre­place­able, being the res­ult of tree cov­er for over 150 years. There should be a pre­sump­tion against felling 22 trees just to allow hol­i­day huts to be built. The applic­a­tion states ​‘Tree plant­ing around the car park area will mit­ig­ate against the loss of trees….’ The car park­ing area is in an agri­cul­tur­al field and can­not rep­lic­ate the Ancient Wood­land where soils and plant com­munit­ies have developed over more than 150 years of tree cov­er. On the SSSI, much of the flower­ing plant interest is loc­ated on the flat open grass­land along­side the track, between sites 15 & 16 and 17 & 18, the obvi­ous place where hut­ters may choose to recre­ate and play ball games. People pres­sure on both the Ancient Wood­land and the SSSI is min­im­al at present, but will increase with the occu­pancy of 18 huts.

3.3 An access track heads north from the A93 and splits east and west, with the major­ity of the site accessed to the east. 3.4 (cor­rectly 3.7) Access will be from the exist­ing farm and forest road.

The access track referred to forms much of the Core Path UDE27, which runs from Tom­idhu to Crath­ie Kirk and the west half of the set­tle­ment. It is one of only three core paths in Crath­ie. At present there is very little traffic on the track bey­ond the houses at Tom­idhu. There is, I believe, a daily vis­it from a Scot­tish Water van, and

occa­sion­al use by estate vehicles and the own­ers of two cara­vans. The pro­posed devel­op­ment will res­ult in many more vehicles using the track to access the car park and the 6 hut sites in the SSSI. Core paths are des­ig­nated as safe and access­ible routes for walk­ers, cyc­lists and horse riders around com­munit­ies. I note that Police Scot­land sug­gest there should be a locked gate across the Core Path to pre­vent use of the track from Crath­ie Kirk. Will loc­al access to the area be restric­ted this gate and by the cur­til­age of the huts? The devel­op­ment would have a neg­at­ive impact on what is cur­rently a peace­ful place to walk, of which there are few in Crath­ie for much of the year.

4 The Hut­ting Devel­op­ment 4.4 Each hut and its com­post­ing toi­let will be loc­ated entirely with­in indi­vidu­al 10 x 10 metres plots. Are these plots areas where the occu­pants can cre­ate fenced gar­dens, as hap­pens on oth­er hut­ting sites? Will they be able to have bar­be­cues there since there are no cook­ing facil­it­ies in the huts? Will the fam­il­ies and their friends using the huts erect tents around them to accom­mod­ate every­one, as the huts appear to sleep only two?

4.6 A car park­ing area with 12 spaces will be provided at the north edge of the site.

Twelve spaces will allow for one car per hut. But if, as envis­aged, the huts are for the use also of fam­ily and friends, where will addi­tion­al vehicles park; on the grass­land of the SSSI or beside the adja­cent houses at Tomidhu?

4.8 The huts will be used exclus­ively by fam­il­ies or indi­vidu­als and their friends for private use …. There will be no loss of amen­ity for neigh­bour­ing prop­er­ties through noise, odours or nuisance.

Eight­een huts will be the equi­val­ent of a new hol­i­day park devel­op­ment, adja­cent to the neigh­bour­ing prop­er­ties, and out­num­ber­ing them. There will be a poten­tially large increase in the volume of traffic passing the doors of sev­er­al prop­er­ties at any time of day or night. An unknown num­ber of people (‘fam­il­ies and their friends’) using each tiny hut as a base for social gath­er­ings will inev­it­ably use the sur­round­ing area for recre­ation, ball games, play­ing music­al instru­ments, bar­be­cues and oth­er ways of passing the time. There may of course be quiet indi­vidu­als too. How­ever, it is quite impossible to state ​‘there will be no loss of amen­ity for neigh­bour­ing prop­er­ties through noise, odours or nuisance’.

SER­VICES 4.12… Water will be brought to the site by the hutters.

That effect­ively rules out any­one arriv­ing by pub­lic trans­port to stay overnight. Even with a car, it is a long and treach­er­ous walk from the car park to the outly­ing huts car­ry­ing water, wood or food. There will be a con­sid­er­able tempta­tion to modi­fy the ​‘inform­al paths’ or to park even tem­por­ar­ily by the houses at Tom­idhu and take the short­er and easi­er walk from there to sev­er­al of the huts. Heat­ing will nor­mally be from a wood stove….. Will the estate sup­ply logs at a cost? The tempta­tion will be to also use felled trees or fallen tim­ber — in an Ancient Wood­land and an SSSI?

4.15 Sewage will be dealt with using dry com­post­ing toi­lets. An area for fin­ish­ing dry com­post­ing mater­i­al by bury­ing it is provided adja­cent to the car park­ing area. The pro­spect of people wan­der­ing around the wood­land with con­tain­ers of human waste, from 18 toi­lets, is not appeal­ing to any­one liv­ing nearby or walk­ing in the area. A dry com­post­ing toi­let, I under­stand, sep­ar­ates liquid and sol­id waste.

How and where will the urine from the toi­lets be dis­posed of?

Where will waste water from cook­ing etc be dis­posed of?

4.16 Organ­ic waste will be com­pos­ted on site. Com­post heaps of organ­ic waste, par­tic­u­larly near farm­land and stock, are well known for attract­ing vermin.

Who will be respons­ible for even­tu­ally remov­ing the com­pos­ted human waste, and oth­er organ­ic waste? Cook­ing, not men­tioned, will pre­sum­ably be done on stoves of one sort or anoth­er. The 1000 Huts web­site advice on cook­ing is that for safety it should be car­ried out out­side the hut. Bar­be­cues are an easy option for cook­ing out­doors. There is then a risk of fire in the woodland.

TREE SUR­VEY & ARBOR­I­CUL­TUR­AL ASSESS­MENT 4.1 Loss of trees The expec­ted devel­op­ment foot­print pro­poses the loss of 21 birch trees and 1 aspen tree, which is equi­val­ent to 14% of the trees sur­veyed in the semi-ancient woodland…….(The wood­land is cor­rectly semi-nat­ur­al Ancient Wood­land, not ​‘semi-ancient’) ……..There will how­ever be a loss of wood­land cov­er at the site due to the felling of 22 trees.

• Scot­tish Plan­ning Policy iden­ti­fies Ancient Wood­land ​‘as an import­ant and irre­place­able nation­al resource that should be pro­tec­ted and enhanced.
• The Draft Cairngorms Nation­al Park Forest Strategy 2018 p25 states it will ​‘con­tin­ue to pro­tect ancient and semi-nat­ur­al wood­lands from fur­ther dam­age and fragmentation.’
• Cairngorms Park Plan 2020, Policy 4 Wood­lands. The Reporter’s advice is that 4.3 should read: ​‘There will be a strong pre­sump­tion against remov­al of ancient semi-nat­ur­al wood­land, includ­ing sites in the Ancient Wood­land Invent­ory which is con­sidered to be an irre­place­able resource. Only in excep­tion­al cir­cum­stances will the loss of ancient semi-nat­ur­al wood­land be permitted.’

Felling 14% of the trees to facil­it­ate the con­struc­tion of a com­plex of huts, the use of which will intro­duce factors that will inev­it­ably alter the eco­logy of the wood­land, does not accord with the above policies and aims.

SUP­PORT­ING PLAN­NING STATE­MENT from GALBRAITH

Galbraith’s state that hav­ing provided Glamp­ing Pods at Brae­mar Cara­van Site, which have been very pop­u­lar and are an expan­sion of its tour­ist offer­ing, the Estate was encour­aged to draw up the pro­pos­al for the present applic­a­tion at Tomidhu.

Glamp­ing pods cater for tran­si­ent tour­ists who need some­where to sleep for a few nights, The pods have elec­tri­city and beds, and showers and toi­let nearby, and there are many adja­cent tour­ist facil­it­ies in Brae­mar to explore. The pro­pos­al for 18 unser­viced huts at Tom­idhu is designed to cater for a very dif­fer­ent owner/​occupier mar­ket, and Crath­ie has few facil­it­ies to offer the hutters.

Tour­ist attrac­tions in Crath­ie presently con­sist of:

• a Post Office which opens for vary­ing hours on week­days and which incor­por­ates a small souven­ir shop for Balmoral,
• In sum­mer, a cof­fee morn­ing in the church hall on one day a week,
• a small café, in the canteen area of an architect’s office, which was recently giv­en plan­ning per­mis­sion to open to the public.
• nearby there is a gal­lery selling jew­ellery and paintings.

Once they have also toured the nearby Bal­mor­al Castle, Crath­ie Kirk and the Loch­nagar Dis­til­lery when they are open, the hut­ters will have more or less exhausted the oppor­tun­it­ies to con­trib­ute to the ​‘tour­ist eco­nomy’ of Crathie.

Sup­port­ing Plan­ning State­ment 4. CON­CLU­SIONS Gal­braith argue in their 5 con­clu­sions, which I have sum­mar­ised, that the pro­posed devel­op­ment sits com­fort­ably with plan­ning policy at all levels of the hier­archy in that: 1 …it is a sens­it­ive redevel­op­ment of a long-estab­lished group of caravans…

To pro­pose repla­cing 3 pairs of rel­at­ively unob­trus­ive cara­vans with 18 pecu­li­ar- look­ing hol­i­day huts, described as being more play­ful than a garden shed and more func­tion­al than a folly and hav­ing a bird­box-like appear­ance, on areas that have been des­ig­nated for their nature con­ser­va­tion value, and close to res­id­en­tial prop­er­ties does not appear to be a sens­it­ive redevelopment.

1. …the huts will offer a ​‘back to nature’ exper­i­ence of hol­i­day­ing off-grid as envis­aged by the Hut­ting Vol­un­tary Code of Practice……

Effect­ively what hut­ters will be buy­ing into appears to be the oppor­tun­ity to sit in a tiny hut, most in tree-lined hol­lows that will be fre­quently full of midges or smoke from wood­burn­ing stoves, with no out­look for many, no water, no power and adja­cent to the homes of res­id­ents, with the (at times incess­ant) noise of motor­bikes, tim­ber lor­ries, com­mer­cial vehicles and cars on the nearby A93, par­tic­u­larly for those on the east edge of the devel­op­ment, and with loc­als and dog walk­ers passing by on the Core path, not to men­tion the police cars patrolling through the area for some of the year.

This seems far removed from what Gal­braith describe as the envis­aged ​‘back to nature experience’.

….they could be occu­pied through­out the year,…..

Gal­braith cite *LDP Policy 2 (see below) and claim …the huts could be occu­pied through­out the year, thus extend­ing the core tour­ist sea­son,… How­ever, their rep­res­ent­at­ive has said at a loc­al meet­ing that he does not expect the huts will be used in the colder months, and that they will be used only as fre­quently as the present cara­vans – I believe only two of the six are used regularly.

…and increase tour­ist foot­fall in Crath­ie and the sur­round­ing area.

The west part of Crath­ie is already sub­jec­ted to tens of thou­sands of tour­ists in cars and buses who vis­it Bal­mor­al Castle and Estate, and Crath­ie Kirk over many months of the year. One car park becomes an intrus­ive mobile home park at nights. Crath­ie, for most of the year, does not need more tour­ists! The area where the 18 huts would be built, is presently a tran­quil haven for res­id­ents, provid­ing very neces­sary relief from the enorm­ous amount of tour­ist activ­ity a short dis­tance away.

When the Estate and Dis­til­lery are closed, there are no facil­it­ies for tour­ists apart from the post office and souven­ir shop open for a few hours, the gal­lery nearby, and pre­sum­ably the small new café, so few oppor­tun­it­ies for the hut occu­pants to con­trib­ute to the loc­al economy.

1. …the pro­pos­als sit com­fort­ably with LDP policies on sus­tain­able design, nat­ur­al her­it­age, biod­iversity and wood­land management….
2. …Eco­logy sur­veys and vari­ous mit­ig­a­tion meas­ures will ensure the pro­pos­als would not have a det­ri­ment­al impact on the site or its imme­di­ate surroundings…
3. …the detailed site lay­out has been con­sidered and informed by the find­ings and recom­mend­a­tions of the extens­ive eco­lo­gic­al sur­vey work….

All aspects of Galbraith’s fum­mary points 3,4 &5, relat­ing to Plan­ning Policies con­cern­ing the des­ig­nated areas, the value of the eco­logy sur­veys and pro­posed mit­ig­a­tion meas­ures, and the site lay­out will be addressed by the rel­ev­ant Park staff, and Forestry and Nat­ur­al Her­it­age bodies.

I will con­fine my com­ments to not­ing that Tay Eco­logy states that the Bird and Bat sur­veys were car­ried out largely out­with the dates recom­men­ded by the Brit­ish Trust for Orni­tho­logy and the Bat Con­ser­va­tion Trust, while the plant sur­vey was under­taken out­side the main flower­ing peri­od. This was appar­ently due to the dates by which the applic­ant reques­ted the information.

Giv­en the sens­it­ive nature of the two des­ig­nated sites, one would have expec­ted the applic­ant to have ensured the sur­veys were under­taken at the most appro­pri­ate times, so as to obtain accur­ate inform­a­tion on the habitats.

*CNPA LDP Policy 2: Sup­port­ing Eco­nom­ic Growth 2 Tour­ism and leis­ure devel­op­ment Devel­op­ment which enhances form­al and inform­al recre­ation and leis­ure facil­it­ies; tour­ism and leis­ure based busi­ness activ­it­ies and attrac­tions; tour­ism and leis­ure related infra­struc­ture includ­ing accom­mod­a­tion; improved oppor­tun­it­ies for respons­ible out­door access and through improved levels of open space; will be sup­por­ted where:

a) it has no adverse envir­on­ment­al impacts on the site; and b) it makes a pos­it­ive con­tri­bu­tion to the exper­i­ence of the vis­it­ors; and c) it adds to or extends the core tour­ist season.

• The pro­posed devel­op­ment does not appear to meet require­ment a) on envir­on­ment­al impacts.
• Giv­en the loc­a­tion, the already large num­ber of tour­ists for much of the year, and sea­son­al nature of the facil­it­ies avail­able, it is uncer­tain that it meets b), a pos­it­ive con­tri­bu­tion to vis­it­or exper­i­ence. It would appear that it is not anti­cip­ated it will meet c), extend­ing the core tour­ist season.

In con­clu­sion, I believe Crath­ie vil­lage is the wrong place for this devel­op­ment for the fol­low­ing reasons:

• num­ber and dens­ity of huts and occupants
• impact on the SSSI and Ancient Woodland
• neces­sity to fell trees in Ancient Woodland
• neg­at­ive impact on adja­cent res­id­ents of increased traffic and disturbance
• restric­tions the devel­op­ment would place on present access to the area
• an increase in vehicu­lar use of the Core path
• there is already a sur­feit of tour­ists to the village
• loss of the one tran­quil area of the vil­lage which cur­rently provides res­pite from tour­ists, and needed as such for much of the year.
• It appears to bring no bene­fits to the loc­al com­munity, only neg­at­ive impacts

The dens­ity of huts, the loc­a­tion, just off and with­in sound and par­tial sight of a busy main road, adja­cent to houses and with a vil­lage Core path run­ning through the site does not appear either to provide the ​‘back to nature’ exper­i­ence that is the eth­os of the hut­ting move­ment. Inver­cauld Estate, with its approx­im­ately 100,000 acres, must surely have oth­er loc­a­tions that would not impact on des­ig­nated areas and would provide the real ​‘back to nature’ exper­i­ence, rather than foist­ing an unser­viced ​‘hol­i­day park’ onto Crathie.

I hope the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee will be able to reject this applic­a­tion. Ann Miles Gel­die Cot­tage, Crath­ie, Bal­later AB35 5TJ 12 Septem­ber 2020

[Whilst not a plan­ning mat­ter, should the pro­posed devel­op­ment not be gran­ted Plan­ning Approv­al, it is to be hoped Inver­cauld Estate will allow the eld­erly lady who has had the use quietly of her cara­van on the site for over 60 years, and the few oth­ers who use their cara­vans, to con­tin­ue their lease.]

Dear Ms Crerar 2020/0201/DET Plan­ning applic­a­tion for the erec­tion of 18 huts, 4 com­post toi­lets and asso­ci­ated access, car park­ing and land­scap­ing at Crathie

Thank you for your email inform­ing me of fur­ther doc­u­ments that have been added to the above plan­ning applic­a­tion. I wish to make the fol­low­ing com­ments on the new doc­u­ments: Crath­ie Hut­ters’ Manu­al (Draft) 10 Dec 2020 p.4 The Crath­ie Hut­ting Site. It is stated again that ​‘there will be no loss of amen­ity for neigh­bour­ing prop­er­ties through noise, odours or nuis­ance.’ This is a hope, not a fact. There is infre­quent use of the present 6 cara­vans. How­ever the pro­posed 18 huts, many of them close to the prop­er­ties at Tom­idhu, and the enthu­si­asm of the new hut­ters, will inev­it­ably lead to an increase in noise, bar­be­cue odours, woods­moke and intru­sion on pri­vacy. No mat­ter the aspir­a­tions of the ​‘Crath­ie Hut­ters’ Code’ to man­age all aspects of beha­viour on the site, there will not be a res­id­ent warden on hand to enforce the code.

p.5 incor­rectly states the huts are adja­cent to the SSSI. Huts 13 – 18 will be loc­ated on the sens­it­ive grass­land area of the SSSI. p.6 What to see and do. Hut­ters are encour­aged to use the track up to the old Lime­stone Quarry where many of the rare and vul­ner­able lichens and mosses are found on the rocks and crags. Foot­fall and dis­turb­ance, which in that area and in the rest of the SSSI is presently min­im­al, will inev­it­ably increase. The Core Path, run­ning through the hut­ting site, from Tom­idhu to Crath­ie Kirk, is not men­tioned. On p.13 the map of things to do in Crath­ie shows the Café/​Bakery and the Café in the wrong loc­a­tions. Lack of loc­al know­ledge or lack of empathy?

Crath­ie Hut­ters’ Code Item 22 of the code states: ​‘No fires out­side huts are per­mit­ted oth­er than sub­stan­tial (not single use) bar­be­cues and (these only if) suit­able fire fight­ing equip­ment is on the Site.’ For the huts dis­tant from the car park it will be tempt­ing to bring in a dis­pos­able bar­be­cue. Who will check? The fire risk in Upper Deeside is fre­quently very high. All loc­al estates, for much of the year, request vis­it­ors not to light fires or use bar­be­cues for this reas­on. The loc­a­tion of the huts, in wood­land and adja­cent to the dense old birch, pine and juni­per of the SSSI, their prox­im­ity to one anoth­er, and also to the prop­er­ties nearby, would make it seem unwise/​unsafe to encour­age the use of bar­be­cues. There will be very lim­ited water at the huts, no access to some for a fire engine, and appar­ently no pro­vi­sion for prop­er fire fight­ing equip­ment with­in the Site. Wooden huts, heated by wood burn­ing stoves, plus the risk from bar­be­cues, will cre­ate the poten­tial for a very dam­aging wildfire.

Wood­land Man­age­ment Plan 5 Janu­ary 2021 Aim…………’to com­pensate for the loss of exist­ing trees’…. The 22 trees to be felled are in the Ancient Wood­land. There is a pre­sump­tion against felling trees in Ancient Wood­land because the hab­it­at is irre­place­able. It is impossible to com­pensate for their loss. The ambi­tious man­age­ment plan to elim­in­ate rab­bits, and encour­age aspen and rock rose on the site is admir­able, but will it only hap­pen at the cost of los­ing exist­ing trees and ground, increas­ing foot­fall and hab­it­at dis­turb­ance with­in the SSSI, and des­troy­ing the peace of a quiet community?

Foul Drain­age Pro­pos­als 5 Janu­ary 2021 The ori­gin­al plan­ning applic­a­tion stated that for all the huts ​‘Sewage will be dealt with using dry com­post­ing toi­lets’ and ​‘Organ­ic waste will be com­pos­ted on site’. Now, 05/01/2021, this has been changed to ​‘it is expec­ted that most hut­ters will use port­able toi­lets which they can empty at home. The six cara­vans cur­rently on site use this solu­tion.’ The cara­van own­ers had no altern­at­ive. The 1000 Huts advice is to use com­post­ing toi­lets as they are more eco­lo­gic­ally friendly, and the con­tents can be dis­posed of on site, so why this change?.

Con­struc­tion Meth­od State­ment 5 Janu­ary 2021 The detail of the con­struc­tion meth­od and safe­guards required to pro­tect the trees dur­ing the build­ing of the huts reads as though it will be an indus­tri­al site, not unmo­les­ted woodland.

To quote from the 1000 Huts Ini­ti­at­ive ​‘Huts are primar­ily about spend­ing time in nature, peace and quiet, com­pan­ion­ship or per­haps solitude, away from busy lives. They are about cre­at­ing a space to restore mind, body and spir­it………. and (they) foster a healthy sense of get­ting away from the pres­sure and pace of mod­ern life.’ The advice is that hut sites be access­ible by pub­lic trans­port or bicycle to dis­cour­age car use.

Giv­en the need to bring in water, both for cook­ing and now to ser­vice a chem­ic­al toi­let, wood for the stove (gath­er­ing wood on site or in the SSSI is banned), pos­sibly a bar­be­cue plus its fuel etc to the hut, and the con­tents of the chem­ic­al toi­let, grey water and rub­bish out, there is little like­li­hood of Crath­ie hut­ters arriv­ing by any means oth­er than a car or van. This is sup­por­ted by the pro­vi­sion of a now even lar­ger car park­ing area.

The vari­ous hut sites are either adja­cent to the car park and com­post­ing area and almost beneath a high voltage power line, or beside a Core Path, or with­in sight of and almost con­stant loud noise from traffic on the busy A93 about 100m away. Four sites are bur­ied in a hol­low with­in the moraines, with noth­ing to look at but the neigh­bour­ing huts. All the sites are close to the exist­ing res­id­en­tial prop­er­ties. Add to this, thou­sands of tour­ists daily at the oth­er end of the vil­lage for much of the year. Rather than a site ​‘in nature, peace and quiet’ or a place to get ​‘away from the pres­sure and pace of mod­ern life’, the pro­posed com­plex of 18 huts looks more like a camp­site or hol­i­day park. This is emphas­ised by the list of things of do/​web links at the end of the Hand­book which include after the loc­al attrac­tions, golf courses at Brae­mar and Bal­later, the Lecht and Glen­shee ski centres, and links to web­sites that would nor­mally be used by tour­ists explor­ing the wider area.

The pro­posed devel­op­ment would be to the det­ri­ment of the com­munity of Crath­ie, and to the Des­ig­nated Areas with­in which it would be loc­ated. Neither does the loc­a­tion appear to provide the ele­ments that make up the eth­os of hut­ting. I find noth­ing in the new doc­u­ments to alter my ori­gin­al objec­tion to this pro­pos­al. Ann Miles Gel­die Cot­tage, Crath­ie, Bal­later AB35 5TJ 15 Janu­ary 2021

Com­ments for Plan­ning Applic­a­tion 2020/0201/DET

Applic­a­tion Sum­mary Applic­a­tion Num­ber: 2020/0201/DET Address: Land To The North And North East Of Tom­idhu Crath­ie Bal­later Aber­deen­shire Pro­pos­al: Erec­tion of 18 Hut, 4 Com­post Toi­lets and Asso­ci­ated Access, Car Park­ing and Land­scap­ing Case Officer: Katie Crerar

Cus­tom­er Details Name: Dr Lea Cram­sie Address: The Old Forge Crath­ie Ballater

Com­ment Details Com­menter Type: Neigh­bour Stance: Cus­tom­er objects to the Plan­ning Applic­a­tion Com­ment Reas­ons: Comment:20/9/2020

Dear Sir/​Madam

Re: APP/2020/1566 CNPA Ref: 2020/0201/DET

Erec­tion of 18 Huts, Com­post­ing Toi­lets, Car Park­ing Access, Land­scap­ing To the North and North­east of Tom­idue, Crathie

We live in the ham­let of Crathie.

We agree that hut­ting is gen­er­ally a good concept assum­ing that it is well thought through and man­aged. Ideally it really should be off grid, small scale, nat­ur­al, remote and in beau­ti­ful surroundings.

As the above plans stand the 18 huts pro­posed are close to sev­er­al houses (ours included) and very close to the busy and dan­ger­ous A93 with end of clear­way restric­tions of 60 mph. Many cars and motor­bikes exceed this lim­it at the junc­tion pro­posed for access to these huts, a sig­ni­fic­ant increase in use on a dif­fi­cult and dan­ger­ous junction.

If the pro­pos­al is to replace the cur­rent 6 cara­vans on or near this site, then accom­mod­a­tion for 18 fam­ily group­ings is a 300% increase in this dens­ity . This cre­ates wholly unne­ces­sary over­de­vel­op­ment and sub­stan­tially changes the char­ac­ter of this quiet and beau­ti­ful SSSI and

wood­land. The planned car park attests to this. Park­ing for up to 36 cars and 4x4s is the size of a muni­cip­al car park for a health centre and shops in a small town. Over­all, the lay­out and land­scape design seems non-exist­ent and does not do justice to the beau­ti­ful sur­round­ings of a nation­al park.

We must now assume our hut­ters will access gro­cer­ies and piz­zas on line with more con­ges­tion up the track (by now a bitu­mened road I sup­pose) The intens­ity and num­ber of huts makes this a poten­tially ser­i­ous man­age­ment issue to be guarded against, namely lit­ter, noise, traffic, anti- social beha­viour and so on.

Two years ago we enjoyed near drought con­di­tions. How do the plan­ners pro­pose to counter the real pos­sib­il­ity of bush fires with high num­bers of wooden huts BBQs etc? Per­haps a much smal­ler scheme deep into the estate would be bene­fi­cial For these reas­ons we strongly object

CNPA Plan­ning Depart­ment 27 August 2020

Dun­eire 11 View­field Road Bal­later AB35 5RD

Dear Ms Crerar Applic­a­tion: 2020/0201/DET

Whilst I agree the area should wel­come tour­ists and provide a range of accom­mod­a­tion, huts becom­ing more pop­u­lar, Inver­cauld is a huge estate, and a more suit­able site could be eas­ily found for this development.

I wish to object to the pro­pos­al as I have grave con­cerns on the following: -

• One of the cara­van own­ers has had her cara­van there for 66 years. The peace­ful, tran­quil set­ting has been her sanc­tu­ary all these years. Anoth­er own­er, born and brought up close by, has, with per­mis­sion, not long installed a water sup­ply to his cara­van. They will be evicted along with the others.
• Secur­ity is a sig­ni­fic­ant issue, giv­en the prox­im­ity of the site to Crath­ie Kirk. It would only take one type of mis­sile to cause dev­ast­a­tion. The cara­van own­ers are well known to the Roy­al Secur­ity, unlike those com­ing to the huts short term. More patrols when the Roy­als are in res­id­ence will be required.
• The site is an SSI of sig­ni­fic­ant botan­ic­al interest. Twelve of the huts are to be sited on an adjoin­ing area of ancient wood­land loc­ated imme­di­ately NE of Tomidhu.
• I under­stand that four­teen huts will have an integ­ral com­post toi­let, the remain­ing four will have an extern­al com­post toi­let. Water is ini­tially required to ​“start” a com­post toi­let and will need to be trans­por­ted by each hut­ter for this as well as for gen­er­al cook­ing, drink­ing and wash­ing, not an easy task. Will water be avail­able all the year round, giv­en that the winter tem­per­at­ures are well below 0C?
• I see that the huts are to have wood burn­ing stoves. Where will the wood sup­ply come from? I have seen occa­sions where those who are not used to stoves dam­aging trees and burn­ing green wood. This is not accept­able and would be det­ri­ment­al to the SSI’s ecosystem.
• I have con­cerns that the single track access road will be unable to cope with the increased traffic. There are to be 18 car park­ing spaces. What hap­pens should there be more than one car per hut? Whose respons­ib­il­ity is it to main­tain the access road? Will it be cleared in the winter?
• Rub­bish and waste will be obvi­ously gen­er­ated. How will this