Item5Appendix5aObjectionsOriginal20180043DETFillingStation

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

AGENDA ITEM 5

APPENDIX 5A

2018/0043/DET

OBJEC­TIONS TO ORI­GIN­AL PROPOSALS

To: Cairngorm Nation­al Park Plan­ning Authority

5^th March 2018

Dear Sir/​Madam

2018/0043/DET | Erec­tion of 32 apart­ments with asso­ci­ated works (amended design) | Devel­op­ment Site On Former Filling Sta­tion Grampi­an Road Aviemore Highland

I refer to the above plan­ning applic­a­tion which has been called in by CNPA, and I would like to register my objec­tion to the applic­a­tion for the fol­low­ing reasons:

1. The applic­a­tion is miss­ing detail about one of the four blocks, as the elev­a­tion for Block A is not shown. There­fore, the applic­a­tion is incom­plete and should be rejected.
2. The applic­a­tion is fac­tu­ally inac­cur­ate, as it states that the blocks are four storey. It is clear from the elev­a­tion plans shown that the blocks are actu­ally five storey blocks. I can quite eas­ily count win­dow levels, which equals five storeys. Basic fac­tu­al inac­curacies should res­ult in imme­di­ate rejec­tion of the applic­a­tion as it has tried to mis­lead the pub­lic and inter­ested parties.
3. Hav­ing four storeys above ground floor would make these blocks two stor­ies high­er than any­thing res­id­en­tial in the vil­lage, which is not in keep­ing with the low-rise res­id­en­tial nature of the vil­lage. Aside from the Four Sea­sons Hotel, the highest build­ings in Aviemore — to the best of my know­ledge — are on Grampi­an Court, being a mix­ture of one and two stor­ies above ground. In com­par­is­on, the build­ings on Grampi­an Court are per­pen­dic­u­lar to Grampi­an Road, being some­what hid­den from view, and totally obscured from views across the McDon­ald lawned area, owing to the pro­tec­ted trees on the adjoin­ing bor­der. The only block imme­di­ately vis­ible from Grampi­an Road is one storey above ground, and I would sug­gest that the height when built was in part con­nec­ted with the visu­al dam­age that would be caused by any­thing high­er, let alone any­thing 2.5 times higher!
4. Five stor­ies would have a det­ri­ment­al visu­al impact look­ing towards Aviemore for miles around, due to the height of the build­ings. Incid­ent­ally, the flats on Grampi­an Court are com­pletely hid­den from view from every angle. This would not be the case with the pro­posed blocks.
5. The south­ern entrance to Aviemore vil­lage is pleas­ant and open on the left/​east of Grampi­an Road. Pine trees and car park/​open area. Traces of the old pet­rol sta­tion are all but gone. How­ever, erec­tion of four ​“close-to-road”, five storey blocks would ser­i­ously detract from the cur­rent nat­ur­al envir­on­ment of pine trees, and expose vis­it­ors and res­id­ents alike to ​“in-your-face” city-like feel, which is out of char­ac­ter for the area, and dare I say, any­where else in the High­lands, per­haps save for Inverness. Such a ​“close-to-road” devel­op­ment would obscure cur­rent views of the pine trees, and would be a massive detrac­tion from the cur­rent open situation.
6. The design state­ment as part of this plan­ning applic­a­tion is inac­cur­ate, as it ref­er­ences exist­ence of the out­door pur­suit shop on the pro­posed site. That was demol­ished in 2017, so one has to ask the ques­tion about the scru­tiny that has been paid to oth­er ​“facts” with­in the

doc­u­ments sub­mit­ted. This is a basic fac­tu­al error and should be rejec­ted or returned to the applic­ant for cor­rec­tion and resubmission.

1. Aside from obscur­ing pine trees, my read­ing of the plan is that the devel­op­ment would extend the building/​car park­ing area to a pos­i­tion approx 40 – 50 metres away from the pave­ment on Grampi­an Road. Such a dis­tance will neces­sit­ate incur­sion onto the earth bank­ing to the cur­rent rear of the plot. Indeed, sec­tion 2 of the design state­ment seems to show that some of the exist­ing wooded area would be des­troyed to make way for the development.
2. It is noted that a tree sur­vey shown with sub­mis­sion date of 6^th Feb 2018 is super­seded by a revised ver­sion dated 2^nd March 2018, being 3 days pri­or to the dead­line for pub­lic com­ment. This inform­a­tion is provided late in the day, and should neces­sit­ate an exten­sion of the dead­line for people to provide comment.
3. It is noted that the pro­pos­al is to remove 323 trees from the site, with 45 of them under­stood to be healthy and mature scots pine trees. The pro­pos­al should be rejec­ted on this basis alone, as the scots pine in the loc­a­tion are mag­ni­fi­cent tall trees that the vil­lage should retain and be proud of, not des­troy. The tree report states ​“The arbor­i­cul­tur­al implic­a­tions of this sig­ni­fic­ant pro­posed tree loss is assessed as mod­er­ate due to the amount of trees to be removed.” More evid­ence — from experts — that this devel­op­ment is to harm the tree envir­on­ment. If the impact was small, the report would have said so.
4. Remov­al of trees would des­troy hab­it­at of red squir­rels, which are reg­u­lar vis­it­ors to the wood­land to the rear of Grampi­an Court, and the wood­land to be sub­sumed is con­tigu­ous to the same. It is noted that there is a red squir­rel sur­vey. Sec­tion 2 of the sur­vey acknow­ledges that the ​“spe­cies is largely asso­ci­ated with pine­woods…” The destruc­tion of scots pine would inev­it­ably lead to destruc­tion of the pro­tec­ted red squir­rels’ hab­it­at in the area. There has to be be fur­ther ques­tion about the time of year that the sur­vey was car­ried out, being Feb & March
5. Whilst red squir­rels do not hibern­ate, they can spend days on end in their dreys when the weath­er is bad. Feb­ru­ary & March are likely to have seen least squir­rel activ­ity that oth­er months of the year, and it should be ques­tioned about wheth­er the timeli­ness of the sur­vey was to detract from squir­rel activ­ity through­out the year as a whole.
6. 48 park­ing spaces is not suf­fi­cient for the pro­posed num­ber of 32 flats. These days it is reas­on­able that more than half of the flats will have more than one car, espe­cially when vis­it­ors are taken into account. Over­flow on-street park­ing will cause prob­lems on Grampi­an Road, and/​or an increased park­ing bur­den on neigh­bour­ing Grampi­an Court, for which res­id­ents already struggle to park in sum­mer months due day-trip­pers mak­ing use of park­ing inten­ded for res­id­ents & vis­it­ors to Grampi­an Ct.
7. The pro­pos­al is out­with policies 1 to 7 of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan as the pro­pos­al is dis­pro­por­tion­ate to oth­er build­ings in Aviemore, save for the Four Sea­sons Hotel, and fails to reflect exist­ing hous­ing devel­op­ment in terms of pos­i­tion, dens­ity & scale.

In sum­mary, this pro­posed res­id­en­tial devel­op­ment is not in keep­ing with Aviemore as a whole, is against the Nation­al Park Plan, would des­troy mature nat­ive scots pine trees, the hab­it­at of red squir­rels, as well as being a visu­al detrac­tion to the south­ern entrance and beyond.

Yours faith­fully

Andy Luke Grampi­an Court

From: Sent: To: Subject:

chrissy curby Mon, 29 Jan 2018 12:10:19 +0000 Plan­ning http://​wam​.high​land​.gov​.uk/​y​o​u​r​e​n​v​i​r​o​n​m​e​n​t​/​p​l​a​n​n​i​n​g​/​e​p​l​a​n​ning/ Hello there,

Just received noti­fic­a­tion of plans to build 33 flats on Grampi­an Road in Aviemore. I can­not leave a com­ment on your site. Ref 18/00315/FUL

I would like to leave my com­ments if you would log them for me.

There was a pre­vi­ous plan­ning applic­a­tion which was called in and refused.

This pro­pos­al to build 4 sets of 4 storey flats on Grampi­an Road is fright­en­ing as we live in a Nation­al Park!

Grampi­an Road is the only road through Aviemore and is an extremely busy road so the ammount of extra traffic 33 flats with pos­sibly 2 cars to each flat will mean 66 cars and all the harm the fumes they will do to the enviroment.

The south side of Aviemore PH22 is the quieter side of Aviemore and a pleas­ing drive into the vil­lage where it gets very busy and it should stay that way.

The wild­life espe­cially red squir­rels will be dev­ast­ated by this devel­op­ment as well as the trees which are ear­marked to be taken down and it will affect the bird wild­life liv­ing here.

Are these flats for loc­al people as there is dire need of hous­ing for loc­al people and not homes used as second homes?

I hope that this build will not go ahead as it will spoil this quieter part of the vil­lage where red squir­rels are in abund­ance and oth­er wildlife.

Why do we have to build on every spare bit of land that comes on the mar­ket in Aviemore. This is a Nation­al Park and I stress Park which should mean that there is park­land left for loc­als and vis­it­ors to enjoy and not 4 gigant­ic blocks of con­crete which will dis­rupt the area for loc­als and wild­life to boot??!! Chrissy Curby