Item5Appendix4Objections20230245DETDalwhinnie

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 5 Appendix 4 26/04/2024

Agenda Item 5

Appendix 4

2023/0245/DET

Rep­res­ent­a­tions — objections

Com­ments for Plan­ning Applic­a­tion 2023/0245/DET

Applic­a­tion Sum­mary Applic­a­tion Num­ber: 2023/0245/DET Address: Land 85M North Of Birchview Dal­whin­nie Pro­pos­al: Form­a­tion of tour­ing motorhome / cara­van site Case Officer: Emma Bryce

Cus­tom­er Details

Com­ment Details Com­menter Type: Mem­ber of Pub­lic Stance: Cus­tom­er objects to the Plan­ning Applic­a­tion Com­ment Reas­ons: Comment:Comments: I object to this pro­pos­al of a caravan/​motorhome park with­in the vil­lage of Dalwhinnie.

Hav­ing been a fre­quent vis­it­or to the area over the years and enjoyed the undis­turbed nat­ur­al beauty of the vil­lage and its sur­round­ing areas, I find it dis­heart­en­ing that a developer wishes to build such a site which will des­troy the beauty and tran­quil­ity of the vil­lage and also the nat­ur­al hab­it­at of so many spe­cies of anim­als. On my fre­quent vis­its to the area I have per­son­ally wit­nessed a wide vari­ety of birds on this site as well as oth­er anim­als e.g.: bats, red squir­rels and snakes. I am also deeply con­cerned of the poten­tial increase in flood­ing risk asso­ci­ated with such a devel­op­ment. This area is already widely known as at a medi­um to high risk of flood­ing and remov­al of nat­ur­al veget­a­tion and mature trees from this loc­a­tion and adding in areas of hard stand­ing, in my opin­ion is going to increase the flood­ing risk even fur­ther which will place those stay­ing over night at the site and/​or loc­al res­id­ents’ prop­er­ties at risk.

I would also be extremely con­cerned at the light pol­lu­tion that this devel­op­ment will inev­it­ably bring with addi­tion­al street light­ing, light­ing from the cara­vans and vehicles.

Dal­whin­nie, and in par­tic­u­lar the loc­a­tion of this pro­posed devel­op­ment, is a fant­ast­ic loc­a­tion for star gaz­ing because of its nat­ur­ally dark skies. This devel­op­ment will ruin the pos­sib­il­it­ies in watch­ing the skies in an unpol­luted light.

I strongly feel that any enjoy­ment of the vil­lage which I would exper­i­ence on my next vis­it is going to be marred by a large amount of overnight trav­el­lers, whose vans are going to cause a lot of noise and air pol­lu­tion to the loc­ale and this will also out num­ber the cur­rent res­id­ents of the vil­lage by almost doub­ling the daily pop­u­la­tion. The nat­ur­al hab­it­at of the loc­al wild­life and the tran­quil­ity of the vil­lage will be irre­vers­ibly lost should this devel­op­ment be gran­ted permission.

Com­ments for Plan­ning Applic­a­tion 2023/0245/DET

Applic­a­tion Sum­mary Applic­a­tion Num­ber: 2023/0245/DET Address: Land 85M North Of Birchview Dal­whin­nie Pro­pos­al: Form­a­tion of tour­ing motorhome / cara­van site Case Officer: Emma Bryce

Cus­tom­er Details

Com­ment Details Com­menter Type: Mem­ber of Pub­lic Stance: Cus­tom­er objects to the Plan­ning Applic­a­tion Com­ment Reas­ons: Comment:I have been hol­i­day­ing every sum­mer in the Scot­tish West­ern Isles for the last fif­teen years, and have used Dal­whin­nie as a stop­over point in my jour­ney each year.

As a keen walk­er and out­doors enthu­si­ast, I loved walk­ing through the very same forest which I can see from the doc­u­ments will be pretty much decim­ated by the cara­van park. I won’t even be able to walk through the route from the rail­way bridge to the rest of the vil­lage next time I stop in Dal­whin­nie, looks to me like the cara­van park will split the mead­ow and trees in two and restrict access for walkers.

There was so much nature and wild­life in this spot (chuffed I saw a red squir­rel here last year), it was a great dose of calm and peace­ful­ness every time I vis­ited. I guess this area is now going to be full of motorhomes and people and lit­ter, not what this lovely vil­lage deserves.

I can’t help feel­ing the adven­turer types this applic­a­tion wants to attract aren’t going to be stay­ing in a cara­van park, and there’s very little to draw fam­il­ies or oth­er sorts of hol­i­day­makers to such a small vil­lage. I pic­ture this devel­op­ment hav­ing noisy and rowdy hol­i­day­makers, and the staff strug­gling to keep all the people in these cara­vans from stay­ing in the fenced com­pound. Oth­er­wise the inev­it­able noise, tramp­ling foot­fall, lit­ter and fire risks are going to swamp the area and ruin the vil­lage for every­one who stays there.

I’d be sad to see this haven of nat­ur­al wild­life ripped up like this, if the site gets built and the busi­ness ven­ture fails, who would be offi­cially respons­ible for remov­ing the derel­ict site and con­vert­ing it back to the way it was before, would the wild­life pushed out of this hab­it­at ever come back?

I’ll keep an eye on this plan­ning applic­a­tion so when I am allowed to hol­i­day in Scot­land again, I can decide wheth­er to change my stop­ping point of choice to some­where more unspoilt.

I am not in favour of this proposal

Com­ments for Plan­ning Applic­a­tion 2023/0245/DET

Applic­a­tion Sum­mary Applic­a­tion Num­ber: 2023/0245/DET Address: Land 85M North Of Birchview Dal­whin­nie Pro­pos­al: Form­a­tion of tour­ing motorhome / cara­van site Case Officer: Emma Bryce

Cus­tom­er Details

Com­ment Details Com­menter Type: Mem­ber of Pub­lic Stance: Cus­tom­er objects to the Plan­ning Applic­a­tion Com­ment Reas­ons: Comment:I fre­quently stay in and travel through Dal­whin­nie. I was very upset to see that this plan­ning applic­a­tion has been brought up again des­pite all the prob­lems with the pre­vi­ous applic­a­tion. As far as I can see there has been no modi­fic­a­tions to the plan.

There­fore I would like to object on the fol­low­ing grounds:

• devel­op­ment is apply­ing to build on ground that is out with the cur­rent loc­al plan and build­ing on the land in the centre of the vil­lage (with­in a short dis­tance of most homes in the vil­lage) and will change the vil­lage feel con­sid­er­ably to its detriment.
• the land is birch wood­land which houses con­sid­er­able wild­life. I have seen wad­ing birds, liz­ards, frogs and red squir­rels there and the rab­bit pop­u­la­tion provides food for car­ni­vor­ous mam­mals. (I sus­pect a wild­cat hunts here). ‑light and noise pollution.
• dan­ger­ous road access from the new A9. ‑the land floods and the build­ing of this devel­op­ment could cause danger to cara­van­ners in a flood and affect loc­al houses due to the bund men­tioned on the plan.
• increased risk of wild­fire. We have all seen the fires in Can­nich etc. this sum­mer; build­ing this here is likely to lead to the same in Dalwhinnie.

I would also like to point out how dif­fi­cult it is to work out what exactly is being planned. There is con­sid­er­able dif­fer­ence between some of the doc­u­ments put in by the developer (e.g. lim­it of devel­op­ment, bunds, etc.). How­ever none of what is sug­ges­ted would be good for the area and would cause con­sid­er­able dam­age to wild land and thus I am objecting.

Com­ments for Plan­ning Applic­a­tion 2023/0245/DET

Applic­a­tion Sum­mary Applic­a­tion Num­ber: 2023/0245/DET Address: Land 85M North Of Birchview Dal­whin­nie Pro­pos­al: Form­a­tion of tour­ing motorhome / cara­van site Case Officer: Emma Bryce

Cus­tom­er Details

Com­ment Details Com­menter Type: Mem­ber of Pub­lic Stance: Cus­tom­er objects to the Plan­ning Applic­a­tion Com­ment Reas­ons: Comment:My par­ents live at Birchview in Dal­whin­nie and are eld­erly and vul­ner­able. The pro­posed devel­op­ment will have a very sig­ni­fic­ant impact on them as the devel­op­ment will sur­round two sides of their prop­erty and on the third side is a pro­posed emer­gency access track, which we would expect guests to use as a right of way to Loch Ericht. The plans extend right up to BirchView with an embank­ment and soakaways just yards from their fence.

There are many con­cern­ing aspects to this devel­op­ment but I would ague that it should be rejec­ted on fol­low­ing grounds:

Noise (par­tic­u­larly at night) from over 50 cara­van pitches, which has the poten­tial to occur 24 hours a day. Light pol­lu­tion Loss of pri­vacy primar­ily due to people walk­ing past BircvhView’s front win­dow to gain access to loch Ericht using the pro­posed emer­gency access track, and from the close prox­im­ity of some pitches to the Birch View bound­ary fence. Fire risk due to the use of bottled gas and barbeques ‑Birchview is a tim­ber prop­erty. The entire area is con­tinu­ous wood­land and scrub cov­er. Drain­age, water, elec­tri­city and broad­band impacts — cur­rently Dalwhinnie’s ser­vices are inter­mit­tent and are unlikely to cope with such a large devel­op­ment. Increased flood­ing risk to my par­ents’ prop­erty due to loss of wood­land flood­plain, run­off from the roads/​pitches, and all soakaways from the site being dir­ec­ted into the bound­ar­ies of Birch View. Impact on loc­al wild­life: cur­lew, tawny owl, pine martens, red squir­rel, newts, toads, com­mon liz­ards, slow worms and adders are reg­u­lar vis­it­ors to Birch View. Loss of mature wood­land Lit­ter escap­ing into the loc­al environment

Increased traffic being a danger to ped­es­tri­ans This pro­pos­al should be rejec­ted as the loss of pristine mature wood­land would be cata­stroph­ic for the loc­al wild­life. In addi­tion, such a large devel­op­ment is out of keep­ing with such a small vil­lage and the ser­vices it can offer.

Emma Green­lees

From: Emma Bryce Sent: 28 June 2023 12:14 To: Plan­ning Sub­ject: FW: Fire risk issues — Plan­ning applic­a­tion 2023/0245/DET Cat­egor­ies: Emma G, Comments

A rep for fil­ing on 2023/0245/DET, Thanks so much 

Emma Bryce (she/​her) Plan­ning Man­ager (Devel­op­ment Man­age­ment) T: 01479 870 564 E: emmabryce@​cairngorms.​co.​uk

Usu­al work­ing hours: Monday to Thursday

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity / Ùgh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh 14 The Square | Grant­own on Spey | PH26 3HG +44 (0) 1479 873 535 | cairngorms​.co​.uk

Read our plan for the future: cairngorms​.co​.uk/​P​a​r​t​n​e​r​s​h​i​pPlan

Sent: Sat­urday, June 24, 2023 11:11 PM To: Emma Bryce emmabryce@​cairngorms.​co.​uk Sub­ject: Fire risk issues — Plan­ning applic­a­tion 2023/0245/DET

Dear Miss Bryce,

I had pre­vi­ously writ­ten some objec­tions to a plan­ning applic­a­tion for the form­a­tion of a tour­ing motorhome /​caravan site, Land 85m North of BirchView, Dal­whin­nie, in which I men­tioned fire risk to my parent’s prop­erty (Birch View) as one of my objections.

I write to expand upon my con­cerns regard­ing the risk of fire on the pro­posed site and the risk to sur­round­ing prop­er­ties upon an out­break of fire. I have ser­i­ous con­cerns regard­ing the lack of a fire risk assess­ment for the pro­posed prop­erty. Although there is no leg­al require­ment for the applic­ant to pro­duce such as fire risk assess­ment pri­or to the occu­pa­tion of the site, I would like to out­line some reas­ons below as to why I feel that a full fire risk assess­ment, in con­junc­tion with con­sulta­tion with the Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue Ser­vices, should be under­taken as part of the plan­ning pro­cess for this par­tic­u­lar pro­posed devel­op­ment. 1

I believe the nature of the pro­posed site would require spe­cial­ist advice from Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue Ser­vices as the site has a num­ber of very high risk factors that should be pro­fes­sion­ally assessed. These include the fact that the area of the pro­posed devel­op­ment includes dense highly com­bust­ible veget­a­tion and trees, and is sur­roun­ded by sev­er­al prop­er­ties (some of tim­ber con­struc­tion such as those on Birch View prop­erty) with sub­stan­tial tim­ber bound­ary fen­cing. With­in this area the applic­ant pro­poses to park more than 50 densely packed vehicles – vehicle fires are a lead­ing cause of domest­ic fires — with the addi­tion­al poten­tial risk factors of hol­i­day­makers using barbeques, gas stoves/​LPG gas cook­ing equip­ment, smoking, and the ​“camp­fire area” men­tioned in the pro­posed plans. To com­pound the risk fur­ther, the entrance/​exit for the pro­posed site for both nor­mal and emer­gency traffic is dir­ec­ted though a fuel filling sta­tion. It should also be noted that the pro­posed site is rur­al, with loc­al fire ser­vices being a sub­stan­tial dis­tance away (Kin­gussie or Pit­lo­chry) with a min­im­um response time of 30 minutes for fire ser­vices to arrive on site. As the pro­posed site is out­doors, fire warn­ing sys­tems would be reli­ant on the fire being vis­ible and a vigilant/​responsible per­son rais­ing the alarm in good time to allow a full evac­u­ation – this may not neces­sar­ily hap­pen in such a rur­al unpop­u­lated area or at night with occu­pants asleep.

In the spe­cif­ic points below that are caus­ing me the greatest con­cern, I refer to legis­la­tion as set out in the Fire (Scot­land) Act 2005 and the Fire Safety Scot­land Reg­u­la­tions 2006. The per­tin­ent inform­a­tion is also sum­mar­ised in a doc­u­ment pro­duced by Scot­tish Fire and Res­cue Ser­vices entitled ​“Advice for Cara­van and Mobile Home Park Oper­at­ors”, which can be found at:

https://​www​.firescot​land​.gov​.uk/​m​e​d​i​a​/​1​0​0​4​1​7​1​/​c​a​ravan mobile home guid­ance web­site release sept 16.pdf

1) The pro­posed area has con­tinu­ous ground cov­er of dense com­bust­ible mater­i­al such very dense scrub­land with shrubs and low grow­ing bushes but also has dense wooded areas where the tree can­opy over­laps with that of sur­round­ing prop­er­ties. Even with very reg­u­lar ground­s­keep­ing /​maintenance, this is a high resid­ual risk that can­not be ignored. The guid­ance states that ​“Grass and oth­er veget­a­tion should be cut at fre­quent inter­vals to pre­vent them becom­ing a fire haz­ard. Clip­pings should be removed and be dis­posed of safety.”. Ground­s­keep­ing as a safety fea­ture has not been men­tioned in the plans. This require­ment may pose addi­tion­al eco­lo­gic­al impacts giv­en the nature of the site. An addi­tion­al guid­ance point Is that ​“The use of bar­be­cue facil­it­ies should be strictly con­trolled and ideally restric­ted to pur­pose designed areas with­in the site remote from units.”

2) Sev­er­al of the pitches do not appear to have the leg­ally required 6m sep­ar­a­tion dis­tance between caravan/​motorhome standings.

3) The reg­u­la­tions state that ​“The dis­tance from any part of the caravan/​mobile home to any site road should be not less than 2 metres and not less than 3 metres from any site bound­ary”. These plans do not meet this requirement.

4) The hard­core tracks to the pitches are not con­sist­ent with the require­ments for fire appli­ance access which accord­ing to the SFRS advice should be ​“road­ways provided and inten­ded for fire ser­vice access should be cap­able of sup­port­ing the weight of a 14 tonne fire appli­ance and be adequately main­tained. Any gate­ways should be a min­im­um of 3.5 m wide and 3.7m high”. The ​“emer­gency access track” at the back of the pro­posed site and between Birch View and the Rail­way line through the field would not be com­pli­ant with this guid­ance. 2

5) The pro­posed plans do have a fire hydrant which is loc­ated by the main road between the pet­rol sta­tion and the Loch Ericht hotel oppos­ite. If the hydrant is for the pro­tec­tion of cara­van stand­ings, the reg­u­la­tions state it should be with­in 100m of the fur­thest stand­ing. In the pro­posed plans, the hydrant is approx­im­ately 200m from the fur­thest cara­van stand­ing, leav­ing many of the fur­thest cara­van plots unprotected.

6) Dal­whin­nie vil­lage has suffered from poor water pres­sure for many years, and even with some recent improve­ments by Scot­tish Water this con­tin­ues to be the case. This would render the fire hydrant men­tioned above unsuit­able for the fire and res­cue ser­vices. The reg­u­la­tions state that where poor water flow and pres­sure are present, ​“a water char­ging tank of not less than 45,000L should be avail­able to the fire ser­vices”, but this does not seem to appear on the pro­posed plans. Altern­at­ive sug­ges­ted water sources would include ​“any pool/​pond/​lake etc with­in 100m of the site and hold­ing not less than 45,000L of water at all times of year, with an adja­cent hard stand­ing” suit­able to park a fire appli­ance. Again, I can­not see any such fea­ture on the pro­posed plans. Any hydrant needs to be adja­cent to a park­ing space large enough for a fire appli­ance, which I do not see on the plans.

7) Although there are addi­tion­al fire points dot­ted around the site on the pro­posed plans, the water pres­sure does not meet the required stand­ard of 30L/​minute there­fore these fire points could not be hose reels as the low water pres­sure would render the extin­guish­ing range would too short to be effect­ive. The legis­la­tion does state a suit­able altern­at­ive would be 2 x 9L fire extin­guish­ers at each fire point, but this would only provide a short dur­a­tion in which to tackle a fire — typ­ic­ally a 9L water fire extin­guish­er dis­charges in 55 seconds. Since the ground veget­a­tion men­tioned in point 1 above would be a con­trib­u­tary factor in fire spread­ing, the pro­vi­sion of a water stand­pipe and hose would be the pre­ferred option.

8) Look­ing at the design and plan for the pro­posed site, the site bound­ar­ies com­prise exist­ing high tim­ber fen­cing sur­round­ing Birchview, bund­ing which fea­tures on the pro­posed site plan and a steep embank­ment and fence where the pro­posed site meets the rail­way line. In the pro­pos­als the whole sites is enclosed by a 1.8m fence. I am con­cerned that the exist­ing pro­posed plans show only one dir­ec­tion of escape from fire — towards the main road and the entrance/​exit through the pet­rol sta­tion. In the event of a veget­a­tion fire in dry con­di­tions, which could spread rap­idly, there is a pos­sib­il­ity of becom­ing trapped at the back of the site by the rail­way line as the fire spreads. Any emer­gency evac­u­ation plan would need to take into account the need to have prop­er traffic man­age­ment sys­tems to sep­ar­ate escap­ing ped­es­tri­ans from incom­ing emer­gency vehicles. In the pro­posed pans, I can­not identi­fy a safe and suit­able assembly point that is not imme­di­ately adja­cent to a busy 40mph main road, block­ing access for emer­gency ser­vices to the site, or with­in the fuel filling sta­tion itself (which is in itself an explo­sion haz­ard if a fire occurs).

9) The pro­posed site is on the flood­plain of the Tru­im river. Should there be an out­break of fire, there is a leg­al require­ment to con­tain any waste fire­fight­ing water which may con­tain tox­ic chem­ic­als such as fire­fight­ing foam agents and cor­ros­ive or tox­ic by-products of com­bus­tion and pre­vent acci­dent­al release into loc­al water­ways. Care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion should be made to pre­vent dir­ect run­off into water­courses or onto ground, which may con­tam­in­ate ground­wa­ters. Con­sid­er­a­tion must also be made to pre­vent fire­fight­ing waste waters from enter­ing the foul water (storm) drain­age sys­tem as untreated waste, which would affect the per­form­ance of the water treat­ment works. This is set out in the Water Envir­on­ment (Con­trolled Activ­it­ies) (Scot­land) Reg­u­la­tions 2011. Fire­fight­ing foam agents are espe­cially harm­ful to the aquat­ic envir­on­ment, smoth­er­ing oxy­gen from aquat­ic eco­sys­tems and caus­ing long term and irre­par­able dam­age. Some of the usu­al meth­ods of con­tain­ment would include cre­ation of embank­ments, form­a­tion of arti­fi­cial lagoons or pro­vi­sion of a des­ig­nated hold­ing tank with bund­ing to con­tain fire­fight­ing water until it can be removed for haz­ard­ous waste dis­pos­al. Giv­en the eco­lo­gic­al sens­it­iv­it­ies of this site, a des­ig­nated hold­ing tank would be the only suit­able option for fire­fight­ing waste water here, but there is no such struc­ture shown on the pro­posed plan. 3

10) The guid­ance notes state that ​“No car park­ing area provid­ing park­ing for more than 10 cars should be near­er than 18 metres from any part of a unit/​caravan pitch. If car parks provide park­ing for 10 cars or few­er, then the min­im­um dis­tance can be reduced to 10 metres”. This require­ment is not being met by the pro­posed plans with park­ing of cars on the fore­court of the filling sta­tion and at the rear of the filling station.

11) The guid­ance states that ​“A means of con­tact­ing the Fire and Res­cue Ser­vice, at any time, should be avail­able on the site”. Since the filling sta­tion is not manned 24 hours a day, and there is no men­tion of an emer­gency tele­phone with­in the plans, this require­ment has not been met in these plans.

For this pro­posed site, the pres­ence of a large fire load­ing (amount of highly com­bust­ible mater­i­als in the vicin­ity) greatly increases the risk of rap­id fire spread with­in the site. With the addi­tion­al risk factors out­lined above, the fore­see­able out­come could be a cata­stroph­ic fire with sub­stan­tial loss of prop­erty and/​or life. Ideally, this should be taken into account at a plan­ning stage to allow for pro­vi­sion of struc­tur­al or pre­vent­at­ive ground­s­keep­ing work (fire breaks etc) to be imple­men­ted, hence my urgent request for a full fire risk assess­ment to be under­taken. I would urge that this should be draf­ted in con­junc­tion with the Fire and Res­cue Ser­vices as there are sev­er­al struc­tur­al ele­ments of fire plan­ning that have not been fully explored and also because the water pres­sure con­tin­ues to be a prob­lem and this would affect the suit­ab­il­ity of the pro­posed on-site fire fight­ing meas­ures. There is also a high prob­ab­il­ity that some of the recom­mend­a­tions in any such fire risk assess­ment may con­tra­dict those of the eco­logy reports, envir­on­ment­al health reports or any report from Scot­tish Water regard­ing the adequacy of the water sup­ply and pres­sures to Dal­whin­nie village.

As a final note, the guid­ance notes state that ​“A risk based approach should be applied where exist­ing cara­van pitches/​units are loc­ated next to util­it­ies such as elec­tric­al sub­sta­tions, sewage treat­ments works, bulk gas or oil stor­age tanks, water stor­age tanks, laun­dry or social facil­it­ies premises. It is envis­aged that via the fire safety risk assess­ment pro­cess, a safe dis­tance or any altern­at­ive arrange­ments can be put in place to ensure com­pli­ance.” I would sug­gest that this implies the require­ment for a fire risk assess­ment to be con­duc­ted on this site proposal.

At present, sev­er­al ele­ments of the plan do not meet cur­rent reg­u­lat­ory fire stand­ards and the pro­posed site plans would need sub­stan­tial revi­sions in order to meet the reg­u­la­tions with­in the afore­men­tioned act and the guid­ance notes pro­duced by the SFRS. I would advoc­ate that it would surely be bene­fi­cial for all con­cerned to have a robust debate focus­sing on the best ways to achieve an adequate fire safety man­age­ment plan – both for mem­bers of the pub­lic and for loc­al res­id­ents — and indeed wheth­er this is fully achiev­able when tak­ing into account the eco­lo­gic­al sens­it­iv­it­ies of the site.

Yours sin­cerely, 4

Emma Green­lees

From: Sent: 25 Feb­ru­ary 2024 09:43 To: Plan­ning Sub­ject: 2023/0245/DET Cat­egor­ies: DMS, Katherine

Ref: Form­a­tion of tour­ing motorhome / cara­van site Land 85M North Of Birchview Dalwhinnie

Dear Ms Donnachie,

I last wrote to CNPA regard­ing the above applic­a­tion on the 24^th June 2023, and have reviewed the doc­u­ment­a­tion uploaded onto the plan­ning portal since that time. I now have sev­er­al com­ments on them regard­ing: fire safety, foul water drain­age, envir­on­ment­al reports, issues sur­round­ing encroach­ment onto the land alloc­ated in the LDP for hous­ing and open space, and con­di­tions of planning.

I under­stand that the CNPA is work­ing very hard at the moment on the new Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan con­sulta­tion, and the sheer volume of doc­u­ments for this par­tic­u­lar applic­a­tion is time con­sum­ing to sift through, so hope­fully draw­ing atten­tion to some dis­crep­an­cies and omis­sions for this plan­ning case might be help­ful for yourselves.

Fire Safety I pre­vi­ously wrote to CNPA on the 24^th June 2023 to bring to your atten­tion a num­ber of issues with the above applic­a­tion where the applic­a­tion did not meet the cur­rent fire reg­u­la­tions for camp­ing and cara­van sites with­in the Fire (Scot­land) Act 2005 and Fire Safety Scot­land Reg­u­la­tions 2006. In my pre­vi­ous cor­res­pond­ence, I sug­ges­ted that CNPA con­sult with S.F.R.S to exam­ine my com­ments in more detail, and I am grate­ful to see that CNPA did seek advice from S.F.R.S. on the issues laid out.

With respect to their recent responses on the 14^th Feb­ru­ary, I can see that they are advising that an altern­at­ive water sup­ply tank of 5,000 litres of water must be made avail­able with­in 60m of any build­ing, with a hard stand­ing and access adja­cent for fire appli­ance access. This addresses and con­firms points 6 and 7 in my ori­gin­al let­ter, regard­ing poor pres­sure. I note that they were happy 1

with the access arrange­ments, but at this stage I would like to cla­ri­fy wheth­er this was with or without the ​“emer­gency exit track” to the west of Birch view and lead­ing onto the unadop­ted track. In cor­res­pond­ence received from S.R.F.S. on the 11^th Janu­ary, they con­cede that they will only reply to com­ments regard­ing access and water sup­plies, which I have addressed above. I can see that S.F.R.S. refer CNPA to the same (updated in 2022) guidelines that were quoted in my ori­gin­al let­ter on the 24^th June: 2018 Fire safety guid­ance for exist­ing premises with sleep­ing accom­mod­a­tion, and espe­cially Annex 3 ​“Hol­i­day Camp­ing and Cara­van sites”. This can be found at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/practical-fire-safety-guidance-existing-premises-sleeping- accommodation/​pages/​13/​

With respect to the S.F.R.S. advice that it is the respons­ib­il­ity of CNPA to decide wheth­er the oth­er issues raised in my let­ter meet the guid­ance, I wish to re-iter­ate that the remainder of my points are still val­id and the pro­posed site does not meet cur­rent fire safety reg­u­la­tions. • Ground cov­er of dense shrub mater­i­al (not grass) and use of BBQ facil­it­ies in des­ig­nated areas only. Although some doc­u­ments from the agent do refer to reg­u­lar ground main­ten­ance, this would imply there is grass cov­er and that this could be eas­ily cut/​maintained. This is not the case on this site. Refer­ring to the com­ments at the bot­tom of my ori­gin­al let­ter, the guid­ance notes state that ​“A risk based approach should be applied where exist­ing cara­van pitches/​units are loc­ated next to util­it­ies such as elec­tric­al sub­sta­tions, sewage treat­ments works, bulk gas or oil stor­age tanks, water stor­age tanks, laun­dry or social facil­it­ies premises. It is envis­aged that via the fire safety risk assess­ment pro­cess, a safe dis­tance or any altern­at­ive arrange­ments can be put in place to ensure com­pli­ance.” There has still not been a pro­fes­sion­al fire risk assess­ment sur­vey con­duc­ted to assess the fire load­ing (risk of the com­bust­ible mater­i­al in/​around the site) and its suit­ab­il­ity for use as a camping/​caravan site with vehicles, LPG gas con­tain­ers and BBQs. • Sev­er­al of the pitches on the west of the site do not have the leg­ally required 6m sep­ar­a­tion dis­tance. (Guid­ance also states there should be a min­im­um of 6m between any LPG bottles and the adja­cent unit). • Sev­er­al of the pitches do not meet the require­ments that dis­tances from any of the cara­van sites should not be more than 2m from the access road and 3m from the bound­ary of the prop­erty. • In terms of access, I see that S.F.R.S. did con­firm that they were happy with access, but as iter­ated above I would like to cla­ri­fy that this does not include any ref­er­ence to a rear emer­gency exit track to the unadop­ted track. • The dis­tance from the hydrant to the pitches at the west of the site is over 200m, and exceeds the leg­al max­im­um dis­tance of 100m from a hydrant, ren­der­ing this site extremely dan­ger­ous. I see from the most recent plan, SA108 (Drain­age plan, 4^th Jan 2024) that this has still not been addressed. • The poor water pres­sure in Dal­whin­nie renders any such hydrant unus­able, and there­fore I can see that S.F.R.S. recom­mends a stor­age tank of min 5,000L with­in 60m of all pitches. Giv­en the size of the site, more than one of these water stor­age tanks would be required to provide access with­in a 60m radi­us to all pitches, and this would need reflec­ted on new plans. It is also unclear wheth­er con­nect­ing a camper­van site to the water sup­ply for a small vil­lage could put strain on the exist­ing infra­struc­ture. I note that the pre­vi­ous cor­res­pond­ence with Scot­tish Water on 8^th June 2023 noted ​“the applic­ant should be aware that this does not con­firm that the pro­posed devel­op­ment can cur­rently be ser­viced”.. • In terms of fire escape from the pro­posed site, enclosed by 2.4m fen­cing, there is still only one dir­ec­tion of escape in the event of a fire, namely towards the incom­ing emer­gency ser­vices 2

traffic, the main road and the pet­rol sta­tion. In the new 2022 reg­u­la­tions, 7.202 states ​“Escape should also be con­sidered from extern­al areas like enclosed yards.” • There are still poten­tially severe eco­lo­gic­al dam­age risks as the site has no fire­fight­ing water run­off con­tain­ment tank – the site is close to the river. I note with interest that the Nature Scot­land Hab­it­at Reg­u­la­tions Apprais­al report of the 20thFebruary 2024 recom­mends that a Pol­lu­tion Pre­ven­tion Plan (PPP) is pro­duced for con­struc­tion and works due to the prox­im­ity to the Tru­im river and the poten­tial risk to Atlantic Sal­mon and Fresh­wa­ter Pearl Mus­sel. It is my view that to meet the reg­u­la­tions, a fire­fight­ing water run­off con­tain­ment tank would be required for the same reas­on, as would some form of bund­ing round the chem­ic­al toi­let waste dis­pos­al stor­age tank to pre­vent eco­lo­gic­al dam­age and there­fore this would require a sep­ar­ate PPP. • There are still pitches with­in 18m of the car park­ing area where more than 10 cars could be parked — this is against the pre­vi­ous reg­u­la­tions, and although super­seded by the new­er 2022 ver­sion, they would still be taken as best prac­tice industry work­ing guidelines and should be adhered to. • An emer­gency tele­phone would be required on site at all times. This is not on the cur­rent plans.

As per my ori­gin­al let­ter of the 24^th June 2023 there are still sig­ni­fic­ant issues out­stand­ing whereby this applic­a­tion does not meet with the leg­al stand­ards. Sev­er­al major revi­sions to the plans would need to be made but even if these meas­ures were put in place, this would still not address wheth­er there was suit­able means of escape for vehicles and ped­es­tri­ans, and wheth­er the site itself is unsuit­able for this use due to the nature of the sur­round­ing com­bust­ible veget­a­tion and mater­i­als. I am also tak­ing into account the remote loc­a­tion of the site, more than 30 minutes from the nearest sta­tioned fire appli­ance, which would fea­ture as a sig­ni­fic­ant resid­ual risk on any pro­fes­sion­al risk assess­ment of such a site. Tak­ing into account everything lis­ted above regard­ing fire safety it would be both unsafe and unpre­ced­en­ted in Scot­land to con­tin­ue with an applic­a­tion for this type of devel­op­ment at this par­tic­u­lar location.

Foul water drain­age With ref­er­ence to the let­ter from H.C. Flood Risk Man­age­ment Team on the 31^st Janu­ary, the issue of foul drain­age has still not been settled. ​“Foul drain­age is out­with the FRM Team’s remit. If not already con­sul­ted, the FRM Team recom­mends that SEPA is con­sul­ted on the latest pro­pos­als, with respect to foul drain­age, chem­ic­al toi­let dis­pos­al and the nearby water­bod­ies.” I am con­cerned that there has been so little men­tion in any of the doc­u­ment­a­tion of how chem­ic­al toi­let waste is to be stored and dis­posed of. The Site Stand­ards Doc­u­ment uploaded on the 4^th Janu­ary says ​“A prop­erly designed dis­pos­al point for the con­tents of chem­ic­al closets shall to be provided as per draw­ings. Dis­pos­al point to include an adequate sup­ply of water for clean­ing the con­tain­ers. This water sup­ply shall be clearly labelled as not suit­able for drink­ing. The meth­od of dis­pos­al shall be to the sat­is­fac­tion of High­land Coun­cil and the Scot­tish Envir­on­ment Pro­tec­tion Agency.” On the SA108 Drain­age plan provided on the 4^th Janu­ary, there is inad­equate space alloc­ated for an appro­pri­ately sized hold­ing tank, although a (very small) chem­ic­al tank is indic­ated. As per my com­ments above, I believe a PPP and appro­pri­ate bund­ing for liquid chem­ic­als should be provided for this, due to the prox­im­ity to the river Tru­im and the eco­lo­gic­al sens­it­iv­it­ies of the area. I am extremely puzzled how we have reached this stage of pro­ceed­ings with this plan­ning applic­a­tion for a tour­ing motorhome/​caravan site and the fun­da­ment­al aspect of chem­ic­al waste dis­pos­al has yet to be addressed in the doc­u­ment­a­tion provided by the applic­ant and agent. I assume fur­ther reports will need to be pro­cured, but I would 3

draw your atten­tion to the fact that I have pre­vi­ously men­tioned that the foul drain­age from this site could pose a ser­i­ous flood­ing risk to the adja­cent prop­erty of BirchView, in an area where there is sig­ni­fic­ant sur­face water pool­ing after heavy rain­fall, and that this should be form­ally assessed by a suit­ably qual­i­fied per­son, or the site would be in con­tra­ven­tion of NPF4 plan­ning guidelines.

NPF4 Policy 22: ​“Devel­op­ment pro­pos­als will not increase the risk of sur­face water flood­ing to oth­ers, or itself be at risk.” I note that the Flood Team response on the 20^th July 2023 notes that ​“A DIA, writ­ten by a com­pet­ent and exper­i­enced engin­eer, in accord­ance with the Sup­ple­ment­ary Guid­ance, as out­lined above is required.” The sub­mit­ted DIA doc­u­ment on the 4^th Janu­ary 2024 has been drawn up by High­land Rur­al Design, the applicant’s agent. The report is riddled with inac­curacies in terms of the pos­i­tion of the river Tru­im to the pro­posed devel­op­ment. I also refer you to sec­tion 4 where the applicant’s agent says ​“As the site lies on rel­at­ively flat high­er ground raised above a flood plain there will be no sur­face water run-off.” This is quite an assump­tion to be assert­ing without evid­ence, and I know this to be com­pletely untrue, after heavy rain there is sur­face run­off to the main road as well as to the land to the east and west of Birch View. Also, the Appendix dia­gram clearly shows an emer­gency exit track through the field to the west of Birch View, as if this were to be an emer­gency exit in the event of flood­ing on the site. I am sur­prised that the applicant’s agent has sub­mit­ted this DIA, which is clearly a con­flict of interest, would ques­tion wheth­er the agent is a qual­i­fied and com­pet­ent engin­eer to pro­duce a DIA as required by the Flood Team?

Envir­on­ment­al reports The Eco­logy report from 3^rd August 2023 indic­ates that the devel­op­ment will have a large poten­tial impact on pro­tec­ted mam­mals on the site. It also notes that the impact on breed­ing birds will be sig­ni­fic­ant and that the wad­ing bird assess­ment was inad­equate and will need repeated. It also con­cludes that a num­ber of Scot­tish Biod­iversity List spe­cies will be affected on the site and that a num­ber of pre­con­struc­tion sur­veys would be required to assess the level of impact. A num­ber of mit­ig­a­tion strategies would need to be applied for light pollution/​pollution to aquat­ic hab­it­ats to reduce the risk to an accept­able level, but these have not yet been presen­ted. It also notes that ​“no meas­ures spe­cif­ic (for envir­on­ment­al enhance­ment and pro­mo­tion of eco­lo­gic­al interest) have been high­lighted by the applic­ant. The report notes that the applic­ant had detailed some meas­ures with­in the Jan 2021 Hab­it­at Sur­vey and Assess­ment, namely • Hab­it­at Man­age­ment Plan — detail­ing man­age­ment meas­ures for graz­ing which could be man­aged to enhance grass­lands on site, bene­fit­ing a num­ber of spe­cies. • Tree plant­ing (both com­pens­a­tion & enhance­ment — plant­ing of trees to enhance the exist­ing wood­land — using nat­ive spe­cies already present in the area e.g. birch, row­an and hazel. For enhance­ment more trees should be planted than that felled for devel­op­ment. • Hab­it­at cre­ation (not men­tioned) but felled mater­i­als could be used to cre­ate hab­it­at for insects and oth­er spe­cies — see provid­ing homes for nature in https://www.nature.scot/doc/developing-nature-guidance • Install­a­tion of bird and bat boxes around the site could also enhance biod­iversity — advice should be sought from exper­i­enced eco­lo­gist on suit­able locations.

I would urge you to take into account that there has been no fur­ther elab­or­a­tion on these vague plans for pro­mo­tion of biod­iversity since 2021. Also, the applic­ant has now felled between 50% and 70% of the ori­gin­al tree cov­er with­in the wood­land since the applic­a­tion was ori­gin­ally sub­mit­ted and has removed the felled mater­i­al from the site. The sub­mit­ted plans detail­ing tree plant­ing will not nearly bring the num­ber of trees back up to the ori­gin­al level of cov­er­age. 4

Tak­ing into account the para­graphs above, this is fairly sub­stant­ive evid­ence that this applic­a­tion does not meet the NPF4 guidelines or the Nation­al Park’s Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan cri­ter­ia in terms of enhan­cing and pro­tect­ing biod­iversity. On this basis, any applic­a­tion for eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment should be con­tained with­in the site alloc­ated for this pur­pose, and should not be allowed to extend into the pro­tec­ted open space wood­land site or alloc­ated hous­ing site.

NPF4 Policy 3: ​“Devel­op­ment pro­pos­als will con­trib­ute to the enhance­ment of biod­iversity. Devel­op­ment pro­pos­als for nation­al or major devel­op­ment, or for devel­op­ment that requires an Envir­on­ment­al Impact Assess­ment will only be sup­por­ted where it can be demon­strated that the pro­pos­al will con­serve, restore and enhance biod­iversity, includ­ing nature net­works so they are in a demon­strably bet­ter state than without inter­ven­tion” NPF4 Policy 4: ​“Devel­op­ment pro­pos­als which by vir­tue of type, loc­a­tion or scale will have an unac­cept­able impact on the nat­ur­al envir­on­ment, will not be sup­por­ted. NPF4 Policy 6: ​“Devel­op­ment pro­pos­als will not be sup­por­ted where they will res­ult in: adverse impacts on nat­ive wood­lands, hedgerows and indi­vidu­al trees of high biod­iversity value, or frag­ment­ing or sever­ing wood­land hab­it­ats. Devel­op­ment pro­pos­als on sites which include an area of exist­ing wood­land… will only be sup­por­ted where the enhance­ment and improve­ment of wood­lands and the plant­ing of new trees on