Item5Appendix3Objections20190121DET

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 5 Appendix 3 28/06/2019

AGENDA ITEM 5

APPENDIX 3

2019/0121/DET

OBJEC­TIONS

Com­ments for Plan­ning Applic­a­tion 2019/0121/DET

Applic­a­tion Sum­mary Applic­a­tion Num­ber: 2019/0121/DET Address: Land 2890M NW Of Carn Sgu­lain New­ton­more Pro­pos­al: Ret­ro­spect­ive resur­fa­cing of hill track Case Officer: Edward Swales

Cus­tom­er Details Name: Miss Jane Meek Address: 75 Glas­gow Road Blane­field Glasgow

Com­ment Details Com­menter Type: Mem­ber of Pub­lic Stance: Cus­tom­er objects to the Plan­ning Applic­a­tion Com­ment Reas­ons: Comment:I object to this ret­ro­spect­ive plan­ning applic­a­tion because I believe it to be defi­cient on sev­er­al levels. Firstly, it com­bines what are in fact two sep­ar­ate issues: a ret­ro­spect­ive applic­a­tion for work already car­ried out, and an applic­a­tion for the upgrad­ing of a fur­ther sec­tion of the track. Each issue should be assessed sep­ar­ately. Secondly, the applic­a­tion is woe­fully short on detail and does not per­mit a prop­er assess­ment of what is actu­ally pro­posed. Thirdly, there is no attempt by the applic­ant to assess the likely visu­al impact of any exten­sion to the track on recre­ation­al users of this area vis­it­ing the nearby Mun­ros of A’Chailleach and Carn Sgu­lain and oth­er summits.

The pur­pose of the track is giv­en as being for sheep and deer man­age­ment, but the pres­ence of many grouse butts nearby would sug­gest that grouse shoot­ing is a primary reas­on. This should be acknow­ledged by the applicant.

The applic­a­tion does not clearly set out the estate’s inten­tions in terms of road/​track man­age­ment. It fails to address the impact of the track on the Park’s spe­cial qual­it­ies. The applic­ant should be required to resub­mit the plans to address these short­com­ings. The resub­mit­ted plans should be required to state why the track is con­sidered neces­sary and identi­fy the min­im­um track spe­cific­a­tion neces­sary to achieve this goal, i.e. the track should be of min­im­um width and include a cent­ral strip of vegetation.

I ask the CNPA to reject this applic­a­tion and require the applic­ant to sub­mit two sep­ar­ate applic­a­tions of a stand­ard befit­ting track works in this highly sens­it­ive location.

BSCG info From:BSCG info Sent:27 May 2019 23:47:10 +0100 To:Planning Subject:2019/0121/DET Comments

Badenoch & Strath­spey Con­ser­va­tion Group Fiod­hag, Nethy­bridge, Inverness-shire PH25 3DJ Scot­tish Char­ity No. SC003846 Web­site bscg​.org​.uk/ planning@​cairngorms.​co.​uk

27 May 2019

Dear Ed Swales 2019/0121/DET | Ret­ro­spect­ive resur­fa­cing of hill track | Land 2890M NW Of Carn Sgu­lain New­ton­more BSCG wishes to object to this applic­a­tion and requests the oppor­tun­ity to address the plan­ning com­mit­tee when this applic­a­tion is con­sidered. With some 40% of the Nation­al Park being moor­land, tracks are an import­ant issue in the CNP. We are con­cerned that the Author­ity needs to estab­lish and apply appro­pri­ately high stand­ards for such tracks. The track at present does not meet a suf­fi­ciently high stand­ard. For example, the track is unne­ces­sar­ily wide in places; there is no cent­ral strip of veget­a­tion over much of the track; some mater­i­al asso­ci­ated with work on the track has been piled at the sides of the track cre­at­ing unne­ces­sary dam­age to nat­ur­al her­it­age as well as being unat­tract­ive in the land­scape; and drain­age pipes have not been fully covered mak­ing them unne­ces­sar­ily intrus­ive. The present track does not com­ply with SNH’s guid­ance on track con­struc­tion: for example, it is too steep in some parts; bor­row pits have not been care­fully regraded and rein­stated with veget­a­tion; and track edges have not been rein­stated with veget­a­tion. There is insuf­fi­cient inform­a­tion provided with the applic­a­tion and a lack of site spe­cif­ic inform­a­tion. The inform­a­tion provided does not indic­ate the impacts of the pro­pos­als on land­scape and biod­iversity, nor on recre­ation­al interests although the track is loc­ated in an import­ant area for recre­ation and is in the vicin­ity of pop­u­lar routes and sev­er­al Munros.

The track is stated to be for the pur­pose of man­aging sheep and deer; how­ever it seems improb­able that man­age­ment for grouse shoot­ing is not a prin­cip­al pur­pose for the track too. Yours sincerely

Gus Jones Convener

scot­tish wild land group

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity 14 The Square Grant­own-on-Spey PH26 3HG Dear Sir

Cam­paign­ing for the Con­ser­va­tion of Wild Land in Scot­land Pub­lish­er of Scot­tish Wild Land News

Beryl Leath­er­land Con­ven­or 57 Charles Way Limekilns Fife KY11 3LH

1^st May 2019 Plan­ning Applic­a­tion: Ret­ro­spect­ive resur­fa­cing of hill track; land 2890M NW of Carn Sgu­lain, New­ton­more, Ref: 2019/0121/DET [The High­land Coun­cil Ref: 19/01146/FUL].

I am writ­ing on behalf of the mem­ber­ship of the Scot­tish Wild Land Group to OBJECT to this ret­ro­spect­ive applic­a­tion. Our main ground for objec­tion is that to grant per­mis­sion would be in con­flict with the Aims of the Nation­al Park, espe­cially the first and over­rid­ing aim which is ​“to con­serve and enhance the nat­ur­al and cul­tur­al her­it­age of the area”.

We are pleased that the NP plan­ning author­it­ies have decided to call in this applic­a­tion, and fully sup­port this decision. We have con­cerns over the con­tent of the applic­a­tion sub­mit­ted on behalf of the estate by its agent. The pro­pos­al as presen­ted is very min­im­al; one would have thought that since this is a ret­ro­spect­ive applic­a­tion and the track already exists, that the Applic­ant would be famil­i­ar with the con­struc­tion tech­niques already used, would be in a pos­i­tion to improve on work already done where this had been unsuc­cess­ful [eg drain­age tech­niques], and would have been able to give site spe­cif­ic con­struc­tion details along the length of the track, for example. Addi­tion­ally, there are many omis­sions, par­tic­u­larly any con­sid­er­a­tion of envir­on­ment­al and eco­lo­gic­al impacts.

We have not man­aged as yet to make a site vis­it but intend to do so. How­ever, to date we have been sent pho­tos of the track and some loc­al know­ledge by mem­bers with whom we have been in dia­logue over this applic­a­tion. It is appar­ently dif­fi­cult to pin­point what work has been done and to what extent advant­age is being taken to upgrade and even re-route the track. We note that there are very many grouse butts in the vicin­ity of the line of the route [shown on the 1:20000 map provided] and the track is in a shoot­ing area, sug­gest­ing that is the pur­pose and jus­ti­fic­a­tion for the con­struc­tion, so a full applic­a­tion is required. Hence the applic­a­tion should give full details to enable a judge­ment to be made; and in our view it fails to do that. There is a case for ask­ing the Agent for cla­ri­fic­a­tion and fur­ther detail on sev­er­al areas. Web­site www​.swlg​.org​.uk Registered Scot­tish Char­ity SC004014 Fol­low us on Face­book & Twit­ter f t

We under­stand that the track has already been extens­ively upgraded. If this is the case then this is regret­table as the estate has had plenty of oppor­tun­ity, know­ledge and expert­ise to fol­low best prac­tice [and indeed leg­al plan­ning require­ments] pri­or to the works being done. It is unac­cept­able for any land owner/​manager to merely do work that would require plan­ning per­mis­sion, and then some time sub­sequently, to put in a ret­ro­spect­ive applic­a­tion, pre­sum­ably assum­ing that since the track is already on the ground that per­mis­sion will be gran­ted, albeit with some con­di­tions imposed.

In this case it is the view of our mem­bers that per­mis­sion should be refused and the track restored. There is also some con­cern that per­mit­ting this track could lead to fur­ther tracks being applied for that would con­nect to oth­ers in the vicin­ity so that there would be a fur­ther increase in the road net­work in the area [it is appre­ci­ated that this is not a mater­i­al plan­ning con­sid­er­a­tion]. We recog­nise that tracks are required for legit­im­ate and socio-eco­nom­ic neces­sary land man­age­ment, but in a nation­al park a bal­ance has to be struck, and the first Aim is the over-rid­ing consideration.

Briefly, the omis­sions that we judge should be addressed to allow mean­ing­ful con­sid­er­a­tion and to allow val­id and fair con­di­tions to be set for the work to be gran­ted [unless the res­tor­a­tion solu­tion is decided on] are as follows:

1. The agent should indic­ate what work has already been done and what fur­ther work and any upgrad­ing needs to be done. There needs to be abso­lute clar­ity over main­ten­ance, resur­fa­cing, re- rout­ing along the length of the track. The applic­a­tion as presen­ted is far too vague, lack­ing essen­tial detail.
2. There has been no con­sid­er­a­tion at all of poten­tial envir­on­ment­al and eco­lo­gic­al impacts.

• In such a sens­it­ive land­scape, and one where wild­life abounds and in a Nation­al Park, we con­sider that a full EIA should be required. We note that the stat­utory agen­cies, as yet, haven’t been con­sul­ted [at least, there is no cor­res­pond­ence from them on the NP plan­ning portal]. • There should be assess­ments regard­ing mam­mal spe­cies and pop­u­la­tions, birds, GWDTES, veget­a­tion types for example in order to avoid or mit­ig­ate adverse impacts on spe­cies and hab­it­ats and enable suc­cess­ful mon­it­or­ing. • There are already unsightly and badly con­struc­ted bor­row pits in the vicin­ity. These should be restored includ­ing after any future use. • There is no detail in the applic­a­tion of where bor­row pits will be and how res­tor­a­tion will be achieved • The drain­age pro­pos­als are unclear and are not site spe­cif­ic • There are areas of peat, includ­ing some deep peat in the area so a Peat Assess­ment may be con­sidered to be required, togeth­er with appro­pri­ate less dam­aging con­struc­tion details spe­cified. • If gran­ted, the tim­ing of any works to be done would need to take account of factors such as breed­ing sea­sons of ground nest­ing birds, togeth­er with mon­it­or­ing as the work progresses.

1. The con­struc­tion details are inad­equate, including:

• There is no site spe­cif­ic detail of what is pro­posed on sec­tions along the track length • There is no detail of site man­age­ment, waste dis­pos­al, stor­age of mater­i­als, res­tor­a­tion of the con­struc­tion sites etc. • Draw­ing 430092 PLO1 shows con­struc­tion meth­od dia­grams taken from the SNH guid­ance but there is no indic­a­tion of where the tech­niques shown in fig­ures 1 to 6 inclus­ive may be used and it is not indic­ated how they will be applied and why. 2

• There are no land­scap­ing details such as con­ser­va­tion of turves, soften­ing of line, cent­ral veget­ated strip. Please con­tact me should you have any quer­ies about our objec­tion Yours faith­fully Beryl Leath­er­land 3

Moun­tain­eer­ing Scot­land The Granary West Mill Street Perth PH1 5QP By email to planning@​cairngorms.​co.​uk 17 May 2019

Dear Sir/​Madam Ret­ro­spect­ive resur­fa­cing of hill track. Land 2890M NW Of Carn Sgu­lain, New­ton­more Ref­er­ence Num­ber: 2019/0121/DET Moun­tain­eer­ing Scot­land objects to this ret­ro­spect­ive plan­ning applic­a­tion for the fol­low­ing reasons.

1. There are two sep­ar­ate pro­pos­als bundled togeth­er in one ret­ro­spect­ive applic­a­tion. The determ­in­a­tion of work already done has to be assessed against what would be accept­able spe­cific­a­tion for track man­age­ment in this loc­a­tion. The pro­posed upgrad­ing of a fur­ther sec­tion needs sim­il­ar but sep­ar­ate scrutiny.
2. The applic­a­tion has insuf­fi­cient detail to allow prop­er assess­ment of what is proposed.
3. There is no indic­a­tion of any poten­tial visu­al impact of track exten­sion work from the nearby Mun­ros — A’Chailleach and Carn Sgu­lain — and oth­er hill­tops and import­antly the routes to and from them. Moun­tain­eer­ing Scot­land is a mem­ber­ship organ­isa­tion with over 13,000 mem­bers and is the only recog­nised rep­res­ent­at­ive organ­isa­tion for hill walk­ers, climbers, moun­tain­eers and ski-tour­ers who live in Scot­land or who enjoy Scotland’s moun­tains, and acts to rep­res­ent, sup­port and pro­mote Scot­tish moun­tain­eer­ing. Moun­tain­eer­ing Scot­land also acts on behalf of the 80,000 mem­bers of the Brit­ish Moun­tain­eer­ing Coun­cil (BMC) on mat­ters related to land­scape and access in Scot­land, and provides train­ing and inform­a­tion to moun­tain users to pro­mote safety, self-reli­ance and the enjoy­ment of our moun­tain envir­on­ment. We wel­come the call in of this pro­pos­al by CNPA as con­struc­tion work of this nature should be prop­erly scru­tin­ised. Unfor­tu­nately, the applic­ant has provided little detail to enable prop­er scru­tiny of the poten­tial visu­al impacts. We ask the Cairngorm Nation­al Park Author­ity to set and apply a clear stand­ard for all plan­ning applic­a­tions for con­struc­ted roads and tracks in moor­land. A con­struc­tion meth­od state­ment usu­ally accom­pan­ies such applic­a­tions detail­ing tech­niques for dif­fer­ent sec­tions of land. Also, for ground pre­par­a­tion and res­tor­a­tion; identi­fy­ing soil strip­ping and stor­age tech­nique if appro­pri­ate. This applic­a­tion fails to set out the estate’s pro­gramme of road and track man­age­ment, nor does it address its impact on the Park’s spe­cial qual­it­ies. The plans need to identi­fy the oper­a­tion­al need for the track and the min­im­um track spe­cific­a­tion to accom­plish this. In this envir­on­ment the track

needs to be the min­im­um width it can be, with a cent­ral strip of veget­a­tion sown to reduce the imme­di­ate visu­al impact. The impact of track man­age­ment on recre­ation­al interests has not been addressed. The vis­ib­il­ity on routes to and from the nearby Mun­ros needs to be assessed. It may or may not have a sig­ni­fic­ant impact, but that has not been demon­strated. We call on the CNPA to refuse this applic­a­tion and request a sub­mis­sion that is of a com­par­able stand­ard for oth­er con­struc­ted tracks that come under the plan­ning sys­tem. Yours sin­cerely Dav­ie Black Access & Con­ser­va­tion Officer Moun­tain­eer­ing Scotland

Com­ments for Plan­ning Applic­a­tion 19/01146/FUL

Applic­a­tion Sum­mary Applic­a­tion Num­ber: 19/01146/FUL Address: Land 2890M NW Of Carn Sgu­lain New­ton­more Pro­pos­al: Resur­fa­cing of hill track Case Officer: June Dougherty

Cus­tom­er Details Name: Mr George Allan Address: 7 Both­well Ter­race, Pit­med­den, Ellon AB41 7PT

Com­ment Details Com­menter Type: Mem­ber of Pub­lic Stance: Cus­tom­er objects to the Plan­ning Applic­a­tion Com­ment Reas­ons: Comment:I am writ­ing on behalf of the North East Moun­tain Trust (NEMT), a Scot­tish Char­ity 9SCIO 008783) based in the Grampi­an area, which rep­res­ents the interests of hill-goers and those who enjoy vis­it­ing wild land. NEMT mem­ber­ship, com­pris­ing twelve hill­walk­ing and climb­ing clubs along with indi­vidu­al mem­bers, totals over 900 people. While NEMT has a par­tic­u­lar focus on the wider Grampi­an area, it acts in the interests of its mem­bers in respect of issues affect­ing hill coun­try, coastal and remoter areas across the whole of Scotland.

NEMT objects to this application.

Firstly, NEMT would like to com­mend the Cairngorm Nation­al Park Author­ity for requir­ing that an applic­a­tion be sub­mit­ted for the work under­taken without con­sent. The time has come for estates to stop flout­ing the law regard­ing hill tracks. Giv­en the Park Plan­ning Committee’s move to closer scru­tiny of tracks and the his­tory of issues on this estate, NEMT thinks that it is imper­at­ive that it calls this applic­a­tion in.

NEMT thinks that two applic­a­tions should be sub­mit­ted for what are dif­fer­ent issues (i.e. a ret­ro­spect­ive applic­a­tion for work already under­taken and a sep­ar­ate applic­a­tion for the pro­posed upgrade of the oth­er sec­tion of track).

With regard to the ret­ro­spect­ive aspects, NEMT is not in a pos­i­tion to judge wheth­er the work has been car­ried out to a required stand­ard and this needs to be checked and con­di­tions for res­tor­a­tion imposed if needed. NEMT also sug­gests that a con­di­tion of any con­sent be the cre­ation of a cent­ral veget­a­tion strip which would sig­ni­fic­antly reduce the visu­al impact.

In respect of the upgrad­ing of the oth­er sec­tion of track, NEMT thinks that this should be rejected

as the inform­a­tion provided is wholly inad­equate. The dia­grams and the inform­a­tion regard­ing con­struc­tion is not site spe­cif­ic. There is no state­ment that the work will be car­ried out strictly with­in the exist­ing track bound­ary. No inform­a­tion is provided regard­ing the machinery required. The pur­poses of the track are stated as being for sheep and deer but maps show that there are butts adja­cent to it so it is reas­on­able to assume that grouse shoot­ing is a primary pur­pose and this should be acknow­ledged. It is stated that the upgraded track was repaired using ​‘loc­ally won stone from exist­ing bor­row pits’ and that the fur­ther upgrad­ing will be with mater­i­al which is ​‘loc­ally won’. The applic­ant must give details of exactly where the mater­i­al will come from and, if it is from exist­ing bor­row pits, how these will be restored after extrac­tion. A cent­ral veget­a­tion strip must be included to reduce the visu­al impact.