Item5CommitteeReport20200108DET

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 5 11/12/2020

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

DEVEL­OP­MENT PROPOSED:

Con­struc­tion of A New Single Car­riage­way Road and Form­a­tion of Access and Erec­tion of Bridge at A939 Deeside — Tomin­toul Road Gairn­shiel Bal­later AB35 5UQ

REF­ER­ENCE: 2020/0108/DET

APPLIC­ANT: Mr Graeme Fisher

DATE CALLED-IN: 27 April 2020

RECOM­MEND­A­TION: Approve sub­ject to conditions

CASE OFFICER: Stephanie Wade, Plan­ning Officer

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CNPA Plan­ning Committee

Applic­a­tion Site

100 N 0 25 50 Meters

Car­rick airn Gairn­shiel Lodge 29 B9 30 350 Richarkarie Tor 320 Del­nabo 2 – 334 00 Q A B976 Gairn­shiel Lodge Dra OLD MIL­IT­ARY ROAD (A939) Crown copy­right and data­base rights 2020. Ord­nance Sur­vey Licence num­ber 100040965 350 A345m CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 5 11/12/2020 A A 340m A930 328m OLD MIL­IT­ARY ROAD (A939) G air River سسسس www سش A939 Drain 324m + m 2

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 5 11/12/2020

SITE DESCRIP­TION, PRO­POS­AL AND HISTORY

Site Descrip­tion

1. The applic­a­tion site is land adja­cent to and east of Gairn­shiel Bridge loc­ated approx­im­ately 7 miles north west of Bal­later. The pro­pose site com­prises a large agri­cul­tur­al field to the south, the River Gairn with exist­ing fenced buf­fer strips includ­ing nat­ive tree plant­ing on both banks, wet grass­land to the north rising into a con­ifer plant­a­tion wood­land and then into heath­er moor­land beyond.

2. The works affect the set­ting of the Cat­egory A lis­ted Gairn­shiel Bridge over the River Gairn. It is noted as an excel­lent example of a mil­it­ary road bridge dat­ing from 1749, and is described as a large, steeply humped, nar­row, single arch mil­it­ary road bridge with sweep­ing para­pet to south. Dra­mat­ic rur­al set­ting. Stone rubble. Thin flag cop­ing to para­pet. The Cat­egory B lis­ted Dal­phu­il ​“Teapot House” is also in the vicin­ity of the devel­op­ment, and gen­er­ally the site and sur­round­ing area is of cul­tur­al, his­tor­ic and land­scape sig­ni­fic­ance. The site is also with­in the River Dee Spe­cial Area of Con­ser­va­tion des­ig­nated for Atlantic sal­mon, fresh­wa­ter pearl mus­sels and otter.

Pro­pos­al

1. The draw­ings and doc­u­ments asso­ci­ated with this applic­a­tion are lis­ted below and are avail­able on the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity web­site unless noted otherwise:

http://​www​.eplan​ningcnpa​.co​.uk/​o​n​line- applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=summary&keyVal=Q96T6NSI0CH00

Title	Draw­ing Num­ber	Date on Plan*	Date Received
Plans
Loc­a­tion Plan		07 Janu­ary 2020	27 April 2020
Lay­out Plan	6/A939/B/6 72⁄202 Rev.A	11 August 2020	14 Septem­ber 2020
Gen­er­al Arrange­ment Plan	6/A939/B/6 72⁄201 Rev.C	16 August 2020	17 Novem­ber 2020
Deck Level Plan	592 221 Rev.02	14 Feb­ru­ary 2020	27 April 2020
Exist­ing Hard Land­scape Features	6/A939/B/6 72⁄204	07 Septem­ber 2020	14 Septem­ber 2020
Plan & Pro­files Sheet I of 2	10037307- ARC-HML- ZZ-D-HE- 00001	16 Novem­ber 2020	17 Novem­ber 2020

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 5 11/12/2020

Title	Draw­ing Num­ber	Date on Plan*	Date Received
Plan & Pro­files Sheet 2 of 2	10037307-ARC-HML-ZZ-D-HE-00002 Rev.P05	16 Novem­ber 2020	17 Novem­ber 2020
Pro­posed Traffic Signs	10037307-ARC-HSN-ZZ-DR-HE-00001 Rev.P03	06 Septem­ber 2020	17 Novem­ber 2020
Pro­posed Drain­age Design Gen­er­al Arrange­ment Plan	10037307-ARC-HDG-ZZ-DR-DH-00001 Rev.POI	04 Septem­ber 2020	14 Septem­ber 2020
Detailed Cross Section	592 260 Rev.03	18 August 2020	14 Septem­ber 2020
Elev­a­tion	592 230 Rev.03	18 August 2020	14 Septem­ber 2020
Para­pet Drip Detail	592 261 Rev.03	18 August 2020	14 Septem­ber 2020
Com­pens­at­ory Plant­ing Plan	6/A939/B/6 72/Β/205	10 Novem­ber 2020	13 Novem­ber 2020
Sup­port­ing Documentation
Com­pens­at­ory Planting		01 Novem­ber 2020	13 Novem­ber 2020
Response to Con­sul­tee Com­ments Part 2			17 Novem­ber 2020
Response to Con­sul­tee Com­ments Part I			14 Septem­ber 2020
Arbor­i­cul­tur­al Assessment		01 August 2020	14 Septem­ber 2020
Con­struc­tion Meth­od Statement		01 Septem­ber 2020	14 Septem­ber 2020
Flood Risk Assess­ment and Appendices	IBE 1653 Rev 2	01 June 2020	14 Septem­ber 2020
Archae­olo­gic­al Eval­u­ation- Writ­ten Scheme of Investigation	70419	15 July 2019	27 April 2020
Archae­olo­gic­al Walkover Survey	70419	26 June 2019	27 April 2020
Con­struc­tion Envir­on­ment­al Man­age­ment Document		26 March 2020	27 April 2020

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 5 11/12/2020

Title	Draw­ing Num­ber	Date on Plan*	Date Received
Design State­ment			27 April 2020
Squir­rel Drey Sur­vey and Spe­cies Pro­tec­tion Plan		01 August 2020	14 Septem­ber 2020
Bat Sur­vey Pre­lim­in­ary Roost Assessment		01 August 2020	14 Septem­ber 2020
Drain­age Impact Assessment		01 March 2020	27 April 2020
Envir­on­ment­al Impact Assess­ment Phase I		01 July 2018	27 April 2020
Sup­port­ing Statement		01 March 2020	27 April 2020

*Where no spe­cif­ic day of month has been provided on the plan, the sys­tem defaults to the 1^st of the month.

1. The applic­a­tion pro­poses the erec­tion of a new bridge across the River Gairn and road align­ment to cre­ate a bypass to the exist­ing bridge allow­ing the exist­ing bridge to be retained for the use of non-motor­ised users only. The new cross­ing is pro­posed approx­im­ately 220m upstream from Dal­phu­il Cot­tage and 165m down­stream from the exist­ing bridge. The new road is pro­posed at a length of 400m long single car­riage­way includ­ing asso­ci­ated infra­struc­ture and a 32m single span com­pos­ite weath­er­ing steel and con­crete bridge with masonry clad para­pets. The out­er face of the para­pets are pro­posed to be con­struc­ted with loc­al Aber­deen­shire gran­ite, if avail­able or match­ing gran­ite. Wide foot­ways are pro­posed on both sides of the car­riage­way on the desk for non-motor­ised users. The design is of a low pro­filed bridge to pre­vent it from appear­ing too prom­in­ent in the landscape.

2. The Design State­ment provides jus­ti­fic­a­tion for the pro­pos­al stating:

a) Unsuit­ab­il­ity of the bridge: The Bridge was built around 1749 for foot traffic, horses and car­riages. In the inter­ven­ing quarter-mil­len­ni­um the volume, speed and weight of traffic has increased enorm­ously. The geo­metry of the bridge (its hump-back elev­a­tion), nar­row width and tight approach cre­ates dif­fi­culty for many vehicles res­ult­ing in reg­u­lar bridge strikes caus­ing sig­ni­fic­ant dam­age lead­ing to struc­tur­al issues. Des­pite the imple­ment­a­tion of an 18T weight restric­tion in 2018 these issues remain a con­stant. The weight lim­it at the bridge has impacted on tour­ism as many coaches are now unable to use this route.

b) Risk of Dam­age to Valu­able Lis­ted Struc­ture: The Bridge is Grade A lis­ted, the highest status of list­ing avail­able due to its his­tor­ic­al sig­ni­fic­ance, remark­able humped appear­ance and pic­tur­esque set­ting. The bridge is con­struc­ted of stone-rubble, and while robust enough to last this long, it has suffered sig­ni­fic­ant dam­age in recent years.

c) Sig­ni­fic­ant down-time due to reg­u­lar main­ten­ance and repairs: When repairs are under­taken the bridge must be closed lead­ing to lengthy diver­sions to main­tain the route from Upper Don­side to Deeside. The sens­it­ive and skilled work can­not be rushed, res­ult­ing in exten­ded closures.

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1. The applic­a­tion is sup­por­ted by the fol­low­ing documentation:

a) Design State­ment and Sup­port­ing State­ment: The Design State­ment out­lines the site con­strains and the design concept of the pro­posed devel­op­ment as well as detail­ing the align­ment study and altern­at­ive options which were ruled out. The Sup­port­ing State­ment out­lines the changes made to the pro­pos­al fol­low­ing the pre-applic­a­tion enquiry.

b) Com­pens­at­ory Plant­ing: This doc­u­ment details the com­pens­at­ory plant­ing to be car­ried out due to the wood­land remov­al for the pro­posed devel­op­ment. The devel­op­ment will lead to the loss of 0.25 hec­tares of mixed con­ifer wood­land which com­prise: mainly larch, Scots pine and juni­per north of the exist­ing road. The pro­posed plant­ing scheme is under­stood to improve and extend the River Gairn ripari­an wood­land upstream and down­stream of the new bridge cross­ing. Pro­posed plant­ing is to take place on land owned by Inver­cauld Estate and four plant­ing sites have been iden­ti­fied on the north­ern banks of the River Gairn. All areas are free drain­ing allu­vi­um soils. Sev­er­al juni­per bushes loc­ated north of the exist­ing road are pro­posed to be trans­planted to a suit­able area and any juni­per bush not with­in the bound­ary of the works will be pro­tec­ted from dis­turb­ance and mon­itored by the ECOW. 14 trees which were planted on the south­ern riverb­ank as part of the Pearls in per­il pro­ject are pro­posed to be relo­cated fur­ther along the river­side and pro­tec­ted dur­ing the con­struc­tion works. The area of com­pens­at­ory plant­ing is 0.25 hec­tares and will con­sist of Downey Birch 60%, Com­mon Alder 30%, and Grey Wil­low 10% to cre­ate a Wet Wood­land hab­it­at. The trees will be planted in same spe­cies groups of 9 – 15 trees. Plant­ing rates are pro­posed at 1,600 trees per hec­tare. Main­ten­ance of the plant­ing will lie with the Coun­cil until estab­lish­ment and there­after the landowner’s for­est­er will main­tain the wood­land in perpetuity.

c) Arbor­i­cul­tur­al Assess­ment: Sur­veyed a total of 63 trees com­pris­ing: 53 Larch European, 6 Scots Pine and 4 Sil­ver Birch. Over­all the trees were found to be in good health and con­di­tion and two trees were iden­ti­fied as hav­ing poor health/​condition. A total of 51 trees are pro­posed to be removed as part of the devel­op­ment works and tree pro­tec­tion meas­ures are pro­posed to be installed for the retained trees on site dur­ing the con­struc­tion works. The Assess­ment ref­er­ences that com­pens­at­ory plant­ing will be undertaken.

d) Con­struc­tion Envir­on­ment­al Man­age­ment Doc­u­ment and Con­struc­tion Meth­od State­ment: The CEMD provided a man­age­ment frame­work for the plan­ning and imple­ment­a­tion of con­struc­tion activ­it­ies in accord­ance with all iden­ti­fied envir­on­ment­al mit­ig­a­tion, con­di­tions, con­sents and licences. The CMS provides an out­line to how the con­struc­tion works will take place, with the fully detailed CMS being pre­pared once a con­tract­or is appoin­ted. The pro­gramme of works indic­ates a con­struc­tion phase of approx­im­ately 36 weeks with works to com­mence in spring 2021. The State­ment out­lines the con­struc­tion ele­ments and the traffic man­age­ment to the site with the major­ity of the work access to be taken from the south. Timed clos­ures are also pro­posed for cer­tain ele­ments of the con­struc­tion works with the diver­sion route via the B976 from Crath­ie to Gairn­shiel lodge. Full road clos­ures will be required for the road tie-ins at each end due to the nar­row width of the exist­ing road. An Eco­lo­gic­al Clerk of Works

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will over­see the works beside the river and ensure pol­lu­tion pre­ven­tion and spe­cies pro­tec­tion meas­ures are in place.

e) Flood Risk Assess­ment: The FRA states that the pro­posed bridge will be loc­ated with­in the func­tion­al flood­plain and has a sig­ni­fic­antly longer span than the exist­ing bridge. The pro­posed bridge deck level and the road level are raised well above the 0.5 AEP flood level, includ­ing allow­ance for cli­mate change and free­board, and so the bridge can remain oper­a­tion­al dur­ing floods. The exist­ing bridge already impacts on water levels in this sec­tion of river. There is some impact on water levels due to the new bridge but there is no increase in risk to any prop­er­ties. The report con­cludes that the pro­pos­al com­plies with plan­ning policy.

f) Archae­olo­gic­al Reports: An archae­olo­gic­al eval­u­ation writ­ten scheme of invest­ig­a­tion and an archae­olo­gic­al walkover sur­vey report have been sub­mit­ted. An archae­olo­gic­al eval­u­ation is required to char­ac­ter­ise and record known upstand­ing sites before their remov­al as part of devel­op­ment works. A pro­gramme of tri­al trench­ing is also required in the field to the south of River Gairn in order to loc­ate, expose, excav­ate and record any archae­olo­gic­al remains that would be sub­ject to an adverse impact by devel­op­ment pro­pos­als. The walkover sur­vey recor­ded six archae­olo­gic­al sites with­in the devel­op­ment area. The sites are pre­dom­in­antly loc­ated on the north­ern side of the river and include pos­sible struc­tures and walls, which may relate to the depop­u­lated set­tle­ment of Dal­phu­il. Mit­ig­a­tion meas­ures are recom­men­ded with­in the sur­vey to lim­it the impact of the devel­op­ment upon the known archaeology.

g) Drain­age Impact Assess­ment: The doc­u­ment states how sur­face water will be man­aged by the pro­pos­al. In some places of the devel­op­ment, sur­face water will run from the road sur­face into the pro­posed swales, where water flow­ing down the slopes could cause instabil­ity and in oth­er edges kerbs will col­lect water and dis­charge to the swale via paved out­lets. There­after the swales will drain to four large atten­u­ation soakaways set back from the river that allow the tem­por­ary stor­age of water before soak­ing into the ground and in turn the river. The dis­charge rate from the devel­op­ment site will not exceed the pre­devel­op­ment dis­charge rate, and the drain­age is designed to ensure that flow arising from a 10 year return peri­od rain­fall event is atten­u­ated on site and released at a rate no great­er than the pre-devel­op­ment peak hour flow rate. The drain­age sys­tem will be main­tained by the Council’s Marr Roads Team.

h) Envir­on­ment­al and Eco­lo­gic­al doc­u­ments: An Envir­on­ment­al Impact Assess­ment Phase I was under­taken to estab­lish the hab­it­at types, pres­ence of pro­tec­ted spe­cies and provide an assess­ment of hab­it­at suit­ab­il­ity for bats and fresh­wa­ter pearl mus­sel on the site. In addi­tion, the baseline data on the phys­ic­al char­ac­ter­ist­ics of the water­course was gathered. Fur­ther to this, a Squir­rel Drey sur­vey and spe­cies pro­tec­tion plan has been provided togeth­er with a bat sur­vey pre­lim­in­ary roost assessment.

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 5 11/12/2020

His­tory

1. Pre-applic­a­tion advice was provided through the Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil pre- applic­a­tion ser­vice and the CNPA provided input to this pro­cess (Aber­deen­shire ref: ENQ/2019/0004).

Hab­it­ats Reg­u­la­tion Apprais­al (HRA)

1. A Hab­it­ats Reg­u­la­tions Apprais­al has been under­taken to con­sider the effect of the pro­pos­al upon the con­ser­va­tion object­ives of the European site the River Dee SAC and is attached at Appendix 2. The pro­pos­al is with­in a short sec­tion of River Gairn, and will be per­man­ent with ongo­ing per­man­ent oper­a­tion­al impacts. The con­struc­tion impacts would be temporary.

2. The HRA con­firms that the pro­pos­al could affect the qual­i­fy­ing interests of otter, fresh­wa­ter pearl mus­sel and Atlantic sal­mon, although as there will be no works with­in the water­course, dir­ect impacts on in-stream hab­it­ats will be avoided dur­ing con­struc­tion. The HRA con­cludes that a plan­ning con­di­tion should be attached to any decision notice request­ing a final con­struc­tion meth­od state­ment to detail meas­ures under­taken to allow works to pro­ceed without enter­ing the river, and how impacts to in-river hab­it­ats through pol­lu­tion will be prevented.

DEVEL­OP­MENT PLAN CONTEXT

Policies

Nation­al Policy	Scot­tish Plan­ning Policy 2014
Stra­tegic Policy	Cairngorms Nation­al Park Part­ner­ship Plan 2017 — 2022
Loc­al Plan Policy	Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan (2015)
	Those policies rel­ev­ant to the assess­ment of this applic­a­tion are marked with a cross
POLICY I	NEW HOUS­ING DEVELOPMENT
POLICY 2	SUP­PORT­ING ECO­NOM­IC GROWTH	X
POLICY 3	SUS­TAIN­ABLE DESIGN	X
POLICY 4	NAT­UR­AL HERITAGE	X
POLICY 5	LAND­SCAPE	X
POLICY 6	THE SIT­ING AND DESIGN OF DIGIT­AL COM­MU­NIC­A­TIONS EQUIPMENT
POLICY 7	RENEW­ABLE ENERGY
POLICY 8	SPORT AND RECREATION	X
POLICY 9	CUL­TUR­AL HERITAGE	X
POLICY 10	RESOURCES	X
POLICY 11	DEVELOPER CON­TRI­BU­TIONS

1. All new devel­op­ment pro­pos­als require to be assessed in rela­tion to policies con­tained in the adop­ted Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan. The full word­ing of policies can be found at:

http://​cairngorms​.co​.uk/​u​p​l​o​a​d​s​/​d​o​c​u​m​e​n​t​s​/Park Authority/Planning/LDPI5.pdf

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Plan­ning Guidance

1. Sup­ple­ment­ary guid­ance also forms part of the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan and provides more details about how to com­ply with the policies. Guid­ance that is rel­ev­ant to this applic­a­tion is marked with a cross.

Policy I	New Hous­ing Devel­op­ment Non-Stat­utory Guidance
Policy 2	Sup­port­ing Eco­nom­ic Growth Non-Stat­utory Guidance	X
Policy 3	Sus­tain­able Design Non-Stat­utory Guidance	X
Policy 4	Nat­ur­al Her­it­age Sup­ple­ment­ary Guidance	X
Policy 5	Land­scape Non-Stat­utory Guidance	X
Policy 7	Renew­able Energy Sup­ple­ment­ary Guidance
Policy 8	Sport and Recre­ation Non-Stat­utory Guidance	X
Policy 9	Cul­tur­al Her­it­age Non-Stat­utory Guidance	X
Policy 10	Resources Non-Stat­utory Guidance	X
Policy 11	Developer Con­tri­bu­tions Sup­ple­ment­ary Guidance

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2020

1. The emer­ging Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan (“Pro­posed Plan”) which will cov­er the peri­od 2020 – 2025 is cur­rently being pro­gressed. The pro­posed plan has now under­gone exam­in­a­tion by the DPEA and was sub­mit­ted to Scot­tish Min­is­ters on 24^th Novem­ber 2020 with noti­fic­a­tion of the CNPA’s inten­tion to adopt. As the exam­in­a­tion of the Pro­posed Plan has con­cluded, the Pro­posed Plan and its con­tents cur­rently are a mater­i­al consideration.

CON­SULTA­TIONS

Sum­mary of the main issues raised by consultees

1. NatureScot (formerly SNH) notes the con­tents of the Hab­it­ats Reg­u­la­tions Apprais­al under­taken by the CNPA and agree that if the con­di­tions iden­ti­fied in the apprais­al are attached to any plan­ning con­sent, then there will be no adverse effect on the integ­rity of the River Dee SAC.

2. Scot­tish Envir­on­ment Pro­tec­tion Agency (SEPA) with­draw their ori­gin­al stand­ing objec­tion which was due to lack of inform­a­tion on flood risk. They con­firm that the addi­tion­al inform­a­tion now gives a com­pre­hens­ive assess­ment of the effects of the pro­posed bridge. The flood mod­el­ling car­ried out show the impact of the new bridge is rel­at­ively small com­pared with the effect that the exist­ing old bridge is hav­ing on the flood­plain. It is loc­ated a short dis­tance upstream and already con­stricts the flow to a great­er extent than the new bridge will. The detect­able increase in flood risk from the new bridge is lim­ited to the land in between the two bridges and has no effect on flood risk to any prop­er­ties nearby. The approaches to the bridge are assessed to res­ult in a 200m³ loss of flood­plain capa­city at the loc­a­tion. This will con­trib­ute to cumu­lat­ive effects of flood­plain loss in the wider catch­ment which reduces flood resi­li­ence of down­stream com­munit­ies. The impact of this has been jus­ti­fied against the crit­ic­al nature of the infra­struc­ture pro­ject for the surrounding

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com­munit­ies. The appro­pri­ate­ness of the bal­ance between the needs of the pro­ject and the impact on people and the envir­on­ment is a mat­ter for the Plan­ning Author­ity to decide on and on this basis SEPA remove their objec­tion on flood risk grounds.

1. SEPA notes that the con­struc­tion meth­ods in terms of poten­tial impacts on mat­ters in rela­tion to their interests, includ­ing water qual­ity, will be assessed dur­ing the CAR applic­a­tion pro­cess, so they do not request that any con­di­tion to address these mat­ters is attached to any grant of plan­ning consent.

2. His­tor­ic Envir­on­ment Scot­land (HES) con­firm that the pro­pos­al has the poten­tial to affect the lis­ted struc­ture of the Gairn­shiel Bridge which is Cat­egory A lis­ted. They have reviewed the addi­tion­al inform­a­tion and are con­tent that there are no new issues raised in this inform­a­tion that affect the her­it­age assets. HES note that this applic­a­tion fol­lows on from a pre-applic­a­tion enquiry which they were involved with and the pro­posed scheme appears to be based on the pre­ferred scheme at pre- applic­a­tion stage. HES there­fore wish to reit­er­ate their com­ments which are:

a) They are famil­i­ar with the back­ground to the pro­ject, the unsuit­ab­il­ity of the exist­ing 18^th cen­tury cat­egory A lis­ted bridge for mod­ern vehicu­lar use, due to its steep hump, nar­row width and sharp 90 degree bend on the north side, and the con­sequent recur­ring dam­age to parts of the struc­ture. HES there­fore wel­come this oppor­tun­ity to address the prob­lem, with the con­struc­tion of a new vehicu­lar bridge and pre­ser­va­tion of the exist­ing bridge for ped­es­tri­an use and its enhance­ment as a nation­ally import­ant her­it­age asset/​vis­it­or attraction.

b) HES are con­tent with the pro­posed new bridge and road con­fig­ur­a­tion to the east of the exist­ing bridge. They con­sider that they would be an appro­pri­ate high qual­ity, low-key design, using mater­i­als (not­ably loc­ally sourced gran­ite and weath­er­ing steel) to com­ple­ment the exist­ing bridge and sur­round­ing land­scape. They are there­fore sat­is­fied that this would sit com­fort­ably in rela­tion to the set­ting of the A lis­ted bridge, and would not unduly dimin­ish its spe­cial his­tor­ic interest and primacy in the landscape.

c) In the event of per­mis­sion being gran­ted, HES agree with the need for appro­pri­ate sus­pens­ive plan­ning con­di­tions requir­ing the sub­mis­sion and approv­al of mater­i­als samples.

1. Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil Roads Depart­ment ini­tially objec­ted to the pro­pos­al not­ing that insuf­fi­cient inform­a­tion has been sub­mit­ted to com­ment on this application.

2. Fol­low­ing sub­mis­sion of the revised and addi­tion­al inform­a­tion the Roads Team does not object to the applic­a­tion not­ing that any areas of non-com­pli­ance with the roads stand­ards have been resolved and a depar­ture from the stand­ards has been agreed by the Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil Road Stand­ards Group. The Team also note the fol­low­ing advisories:

a) The applic­ant should give fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion to pro­vi­sions of some form of road­side ped­es­tri­an link­age with­in the road verge to provide an off-road route from park­ing to the gated ped­es­tri­an access loc­ated on the north­ern side of the exist­ing sec­tion of A393 loop which will be replaced by the new bridge and road align­ment. The Team note that this loop is inten­ded to be closed to all motor­ised vehicu­lar traffic except for access.

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b) A sep­ar­ate form­al Traffic Reg­u­la­tion Order will be required to close the gated sec­tion of repur­posed A939 to vehicu­lar traffic as indicated.

c) It is noted that the refuse col­lec­tion point for Gairn­shiel Lodge is loc­ated bey­ond the pro­posed gated sec­tion of road and as such it is strongly advised that arrange­ments be made for a relo­cated waste col­lec­tion point out­with the gated sec­tion along­side B976.

d) Applic­ant is advised to con­sider relo­cat­ing the ​“vari­able part time ​‘snow” signs along with oth­er junction/​brown tour­ism signs from cur­rent B976/ A939 junc­tion to the new junction.

1. Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil Built Her­it­age Officer notes that the pro­pos­al is with­in the set­ting of the cat­egory A lis­ted Gairn­shiel Bridge and the cat­egory B lis­ted Glen Gairn Dal­phu­il. The Officer con­siders that the chosen pos­i­tion­ing of the bridge (option C) to be the least invas­ive in regards to the his­tor­ic envir­on­ment and its land­scape set­ting. Regard­ing the set­ting of the lis­ted struc­tures, the Officer notes that the design, mater­i­als and land­scap­ing of the pro­pos­al appear to have been well con­sidered to allow the bridge to blend into the land­scape although recom­mends that the fin­ishes are tightly con­trolled through samples to ensure this ele­ment is not dimin­ished. The Officer ori­gin­ally raised con­cern that any require­ments in terms of sig­nage could devalue the design qual­ity of the bridge and there­fore sought this inform­a­tion at applic­a­tion stage. The Officer also quer­ies the safety of people want­ing to vis­it the lis­ted bridge and reminds the Coun­cil of their oblig­a­tion to keep the lis­ted struc­ture in a good stand­ard of repair and main­ten­ance as required by the Plan­ning (Lis­ted Build­ings and Con­ser­va­tion Area) (Scot­land) Act 1997.

2. Fol­low­ing the sub­mis­sion of revised inform­a­tion, includ­ing that for sig­nage and traffic man­age­ment, the Officer notes that the redund­ant sig­nage is being removed, exist­ing sig­nage relo­cated and a small num­ber of new signs installed. The Officer also notes that no new light­ing is pro­posed and con­firms that they have no fur­ther com­ments on the scheme.

3. Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil Flood and Coast Pro­tec­tion ori­gin­ally had a hold­ing objec­tion to the pro­pos­al until the addi­tion­al inform­a­tion was sub­mit­ted by way of a Flood Risk Assess­ment. Fol­low­ing the sub­mis­sion of this inform­a­tion, the Team con­firm their sat­is­fac­tion that the addi­tion­al detail addresses the issues raised by SEPA and echoed by the Team and they remove their objec­tion. They also request con­firm­a­tion that an agree­ment has been estab­lished with the landown­er accept­ing the enlarge­ment of flood extents.

4. Aber­deen­shire Coun­cil Archae­ology Ser­vice has no objec­tions to the scheme but requests that a post determ­in­a­tion con­di­tion is attached to any sub­sequent decision notice for the sub­mis­sion and agree­ment of a Pro­gramme of Archae­olo­gic­al Works to safe­guard and record the archae­olo­gic­al poten­tial of the area.

5. Scot­tish Forestry Officer states that the devel­op­ment affects an area shown as con­ifer wood­land on the Nation­al Forest Invent­ory. The plan shows approx­im­ately 21 trees being removed to facil­it­ate the devel­op­ment and there is a pro­pos­al to carry out an unspe­cified amount of Com­pens­at­ory Plant­ing of nat­ive broadleaved trees along the river bank.

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1. Hav­ing reviewed the sub­mit­ted Arbor­i­cul­tur­al Assess­ment that includes the pro­posed com­pens­at­ory plant­ing pro­pos­al, the Officer notes that whilst the doc­u­ment spe­cifies the num­ber of trees to be felled, it does not provide a total area of wood­land lost to this devel­op­ment. The com­pens­at­ory plant­ing pro­pos­al states that an area no less than that felled will be replanted, and requests that the area to be felled and planted should be provided to ensure that it can be secured fully by way of plan­ning con­di­tion. The Officer also requests con­firm­a­tion that it owns the land or has agree­ment with the landown­er where the com­pens­at­ory plant­ing will take place, to ensure the wood­land is estab­lished, pro­tec­ted and main­tained in perpetuity.

2. The Officer also requests inform­a­tion on how the com­pens­at­ory plant­ing will be car­ried out and notes that an EIA screen­ing opin­ion for affor­est­a­tion will be required due to the pro­posed plant­ing being adja­cent to an SAC. In addi­tion the Officer requires a post determ­in­a­tion con­di­tion for the agree­ment and imple­ment­a­tion of a mon­it­or­ing and main­ten­ance pro­gramme for the planting.

3. CNPA Eco­logy Officer has the fol­low­ing com­ments fol­low­ing the sub­mis­sion of revised material:

a) Red Squir­rel sur­vey: The Officer wel­comes the sub­mis­sion of the red squir­rel sur­vey and spe­cies pro­tec­tion plan and notes that the pro­pos­al will have a short term impact on 1 – 2 indi­vidu­al squir­rels due to the felling of trees and con­struc­tion dis­turb­ance, but this is not likely to have a sig­ni­fic­ant impact on the loc­al pop­u­la­tion as there is suf­fi­cient altern­at­ive hab­it­at with­in the area. The Officer also sug­gests fur­ther mit­ig­a­tion by way of a squir­rel rope bridge.

b) Bat roost poten­tial sur­vey: The Officer wel­comes the sub­mis­sion of a pre­lim­in­ary bat roost assess­ment and notes that none of the 36 trees that will be dir­ectly impacted by the works or trees with­in a 5m buf­fer of these trees con­tained fea­tures cap­able of sup­port­ing bat roosts. As such there is not anti­cip­ated to be an effect on bat roosts as a res­ult of the proposal.

c) Con­struc­tion Meth­od State­ment: a pre­lim­in­ary report has been sub­mit­ted although the Officer notes that a final report will still be required by sus­pens­ive con­di­tion to ensure that the state­ment is site spe­cif­ic and cov­ers all the aspects stated with­in the Hab­it­ats Reg­u­la­tions Apprais­al to include mit­ig­a­tion for each of the qual­i­fy­ing features.

d) The Officer also wel­comes the sub­mis­sion of the drain­age arrange­ment plan which demon­strates the drain­age run-off cap­ture dur­ing oper­a­tion that pre­vents pol­lu­tion enter­ing the watercourse.

1. In addi­tion to the above, the Officer requires fur­ther sus­pens­ive con­di­tions to include: pre-con­struc­tion sur­veys for pro­tec­ted spe­cies as detailed in the Exten­ded Phase I Hab­it­at Sur­vey report.

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1. Fol­low­ing con­firm­a­tion from the applic­ant that squir­rel bridges are not pro­posed the Officer con­firms that this fea­ture would be a wel­come addi­tion but as the pop­u­la­tion of squir­rels with­in the area is not likely to be par­tic­u­larly high, they Officer con­firms this is not an abso­lute essen­tial in this case. Regard­ing the pro­posed com­pens­at­ory plant­ing, the Officer is con­tent with the addi­tion­al details submitted.

2. CNPA Land­scape Officer con­siders that pro­pos­al is likely to have sig­ni­fic­ant effects in the loc­al land­scape. Of all the route and sit­ing options, the Officer agrees that the chosen Align­ment C would be most suit­able and the pro­posed design of the new bridge would gen­er­ally appear simple and relate to the open, flat strath floor and loc­al fea­tures and mater­i­als. Non­ethe­less, the pro­pos­al would con­trast to some of the loc­al, rur­al land­scape char­ac­ter­ist­ics and dis­tinct­ive Spe­cial Land­scape Qual­it­ies and it is recom­men­ded that fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion of mit­ig­a­tion meas­ures and the pro­vi­sion of addi­tion­al details, includ­ing the design of the bridge para­pet walls, verges and vehicle restraint safety fences (in ref­er­ence to how these are exper­i­enced by trav­el­lers), the design and adja­cent veget­a­tion of the abut­ment walls, and the repair and con­struc­tion of new stone walls. Fur­ther­more, addi­tion­al survey/​inform­a­tion is required on pro­posed tree works, new plant­ing, road fur­niture and con­struc­tion methods.

3. Fol­low­ing the sub­mis­sion of revised and addi­tion­al inform­a­tion the Officer has the fol­low­ing addi­tion­al comments:

a) Vis­it­or park­ing: The Officer notes that it is regret­table that the pro­vi­sion of park­ing and access paths to the exist­ing bridge is not included with­in the pro­pos­al, how­ever the inclu­sion for ​“new hard­stand­ing verge” to provide park­ing for four cars east of the estate track gate will provide some facility.

b) Height of walls and user exper­i­ence: The bridge para­pet walls have been reduced to 1m above verge level which should enable trav­el­lers’ views of the sur­round­ing land­scape, includ­ing the exist­ing bridge to enhance the exper­i­ence of users. The interi­or face wall may be sub­ject to a shal­low relief pat­tern and it is sug­ges­ted that the exter­i­or wall face will util­ise exist­ing stone on site. The officer recom­mends that as these are to be con­firmed at detailed design stage, an accept­able solu­tion would be the use of a sus­pens­ive con­di­tion to obtain this information.

c) Sum­mary: The Officer is dis­ap­poin­ted that the applic­ant has not taken for­ward all the mit­ig­a­tion meas­ures recom­men­ded by the Officer to pro­tect and enhance the SLQs with­in the Nation­al Park, includ­ing the repair and con­struc­tion of stone walls;

d) The Officer notes that the applic­ant has mod­i­fied their reas­on for not includ­ing new/​repaired stone walls with­in the pro­pos­al with a state­ment “…we con­sider the inclu­sion of road­side stone walling, which would require quant­it­ies of new stone to be acquired to be dis­pro­por­tion­ate”. The Officer states that the pro­posed devel­op­ment will res­ult in some sig­ni­fic­ant adverse land­scape and visu­al effects in a sens­it­ive loc­a­tion with­in a Nation­al Park and the Officer sug­gests that road­side stone walling should be incor­por­ated with­in the scheme to pro­tect and enhance this land­scape characteristic.

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e) The scheme has been revised to include a new low stone wall (500mm high) using reclaimed stone along the edge of the wide verge to the north east of the new bridge and the Officer con­siders that this would have minor bene­fi­cial effects but would not com­pensate for the exist­ing walls removed as part of the pro­ject, or sat­is­fy NPPP in terms of enhance­ment of the SLQs.

f) The Officer recom­mends that any stone from dis­mantled walls may be bet­ter used for repair and recon­struc­tion of stone walls with­in the scheme.

g) Embank­ments: The Officer con­siders that the embank­ments either side of the river cross­ing will appear to sharply con­trast to the slope of the adja­cent open fields and it would be prefer­able if these embank­ments were graded more gently. The applic­ant jus­ti­fies the pro­posed embank­ments by stat­ing that any changes would alter the flood risk of the pro­pos­al and this mit­ig­a­tion would require extra land. The Land­scape Officer notes that the lat­ter is true for the con­struc­tion phase but notes that tying in the slopes means they can be included with­in the fenced agri­cul­tur­al land to be used by the farm­er rather than as land to be main­tained by the Council.

h) Juni­per: The Officer con­siders that the pro­posed trans­plant­ing of juni­per with­in the devel­op­ment area to a suit­able loc­a­tion, to be mon­itored by the ECoW is reas­sur­ing but wishes to high­light that the pro­cess can be chal­len­ging and this the meth­od for this should be agreed in advance. The Officer notes the Stand­ing Advice for juni­per translocation.

i) Com­pens­at­ory plant­ing: The Officer notes that details have been provided for the pro­posed com­pens­at­ory plant­ing and it is noted that the estab­lish­ment of the trees will be the respons­ib­il­ity of an Arbor­i­cul­tur­ist from the Council’s Land­scape Ser­vices and once the trees are estab­lished the tree tubes will be removed.

1. The Officer recom­mends the inclu­sion of sus­pens­ive con­di­tions on any decision notice includ­ing: details of the bridge para­pets inside and out­er faces, verge sur­fa­cing, and the sub­mis­sion of a final Con­struc­tion Meth­od Statement.

2. CNPA Out­door Access Officer wel­comes the revi­sions to the scheme which includes a gap for NMU’s at both gates on the old road. The Officer wishes to high­light that the route is part of the Snow Roads Scen­ic Route and at present it would appear that the sig­nage plan doesn’t include the exist­ing brown Snow Roads signs, which should be addressed.

3. The Dee Dis­trict Sal­mon Fish­ery Board has provided two sets of com­ments to the scheme. The first, provided gen­er­al com­ments not­ing the eco­lo­gic­al import­ance of the Gairn to the River Dee SAC and in par­tic­u­lar its import­ance as a spring sal­mon pro­du­cing stream. Any devel­op­ment of this scale will inev­it­ably have impacts on the river dur­ing con­struc­tion works. The Fish­ery Board reit­er­ate the import­ance of off­set­ting con­struc­tion impacts to the Gairn.

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1. Fol­low­ing the sub­mis­sion of the revised doc­u­ments, the Fish­ery Board con­firm they have no fur­ther com­ments on the scheme and are pleased that their pre­vi­ous com­ments have been taken into account by the developer.

2. Bal­later and Crath­ie Com­munity Coun­cil were con­sul­ted on the applic­a­tion but have not provided any comments.

3. Brae­mar Com­munity Coun­cil sup­port the applic­a­tion with ref­er­ence made to the Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan policy 2: Sup­port­ing Eco­nom­ic Growth. They also note that the res­id­ents of Brae­mar and vis­it­ors to the vil­lage are reg­u­lar users of the bridge. A copy of their full response can be found at Appendix 3.

REP­RES­ENT­A­TIONS

1. The applic­a­tion has been advert­ised and no let­ters of pub­lic rep­res­ent­a­tion have been received.

APPRAIS­AL

1. The main plan­ning con­sid­er­a­tions in rela­tion to this applic­a­tion com­prise: the prin­ciple of devel­op­ment; the impact on the nat­ur­al envir­on­ment in respect of des­ig­nated areas, pro­tec­ted spe­cies and land­scape impacts; the impact on the his­tor­ic envir­on­ment; togeth­er with the impact on the road net­work, flood­ing, and the design, scale and mater­i­als of the proposal.

Prin­ciple

1. The pro­pos­al is sought to erect a new bridge cross­ing over the River Gairn with asso­ci­ated approach roads, clos­ing off the ori­gin­al bridge from pub­lic vehicle use. The need for a new bridge has been demon­strated through­out and the prin­ciple is gen­er­ally accep­ted. It has been jus­ti­fied that the exist­ing bridge is in poor con­di­tion, with a short lifespan for accom­mod­at­ing road traffic. The pro­posed new route is sought to accom­mod­ate safer traffic move­ment whilst con­serving the Cat­egory A lis­ted exist­ing bridge by remov­ing it from fur­ther poten­tial vehicle dam­age. This is a key route with­in the Nation­al Park run­ning between Tomin­toul and Brae­mar, being pro­moted as the Snow Roads Scen­ic Route and the prin­ciple of main­tain­ing this route is welcomed.

2. Accord­ingly, the pro­pos­als to accom­mod­ate traffic safely and pro­mote appre­ci­ation of both the land­scape and the lis­ted bridge are in prin­ciple fully sup­por­ted by Cairngorms Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan Policy 2: Sup­port­ing Eco­nom­ic Growth and Policy 9: Cul­tur­al Her­it­age. This gen­er­al policy sup­port is of course sub­ject to, and under­pinned by, the detail of the design, lay­out, ser­vi­cing and land­scap­ing of the pro­pos­als and any envir­on­ment­al impacts as detailed below.

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Envir­on­ment­al Issues- Pro­tec­ted Spe­cies and European Sites

1. Policy 4: Nat­ur­al Her­it­age sets out