Item6AASpeyHouse20190298DET

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 6 24/01/2020

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

DEVEL­OP­MENT PROPOSED:

Spey House Phase 2 — Devel­op­ment of 14 no dwell­ings includ­ing 6no ter­raced houses, 4no bun­ga­lows and 4no cot­tage flats at Land 20M South East Of Spey House Cairngorm Tech­no­logy Park Dal­faber Drive Aviemore

REF­ER­ENCE: 2019/0298/DET

APPLIC­ANT: Upland Developments

DATE CALLED-IN: 23 Septem­ber 2019

RECOM­MEND­A­TION: Approve sub­ject to con­di­tions and developer contribution

CASE OFFICER: Stephanie Wade, Plan­ning Officer

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 6 24/01/2020

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 6 24/01/2020

SITE DESCRIP­TION, PRO­POS­AL AND HISTORY

Site Descrip­tion

1. The applic­a­tion site com­prises approx­im­ately 0.4 hec­tares of recently cleared, undeveloped land, loc­ated to the east of Spey House, and to the south of Dal­faber Drive, with­in Aviemore. The site is bound to the east by the Strath­spey Her­it­age Rail­way line and to the south by the recently approved hos­pit­al devel­op­ment site. The site forms part of what was ori­gin­ally the Cairngorm Tech­no­logy Park, although the adja­cent Spey House was the only busi­ness devel­op­ment com­pleted at the time with­in the Tech­no­logy Park. There are fur­ther busi­ness and indus­tri­al units on land to the north of Dal­faber Drive in a wedge between the main Inverness-Aviemore rail­way line and the Strath­spey Steam Rail­way line. Bey­ond the Steam Rail­way line to the east is res­id­en­tial housing.

2. The site is accessed via a shared, exist­ing private road that joins Dal­faber Drive. The road also serves the Spey House devel­op­ment and the Com­munity hos­pit­al devel­op­ment site. This road is cur­rently being pro­gressed through a Road Con­struc­tion Con­sent Order by the High­land Coun­cil for it to be con­sidered for adop­tion by the Coun­cil. There are two exist­ing access bell­mouths along the private road to the devel­op­ment site.

3. The site is not covered by any spe­cif­ic envir­on­ment­al designations.

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=PY2NIESI0CH00

Title	Draw­ing Num­ber	Date on Plan*	Date Received
Plans:
Loc­a­tion Plan	AL(0) 01	-	23 Septem­ber 2019
Pro­posed Site Layout	AL(0) 02 Rev. D	23 Octo­ber 2019	23 Octo­ber 2019
Site Sec­tions	AL(0) 050 Rev. A	23 August 2019	23 Septem­ber 2019
Land­scap­ing Plan	AL(0) 03 Rev. A	22 August 2019	23 Septem­ber 2019
Block F‑F-D Floor Plans	FFD-100 Rev. A	23 August 2019	23 Septem­ber 2019
Block F‑F-D Extern­al 3D Views	FFD-210 Rev. A	23 August 2019	23 Septem­ber 2019

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 6 24/01/2020

Block F‑F-D Elevations	FFD-200 Rev. A	23 August 2019	23 Septem­ber 2019
Block BCCC Floor Plans	BCCC-100 Rev. A	23 August 2019	23 Septem­ber 2019
Block BCCC Elevations	BCCC-200 Rev. A	23 August 2019	23 Septem­ber 2019
Block BCCC 3D Views	BCCC-201 Rev. A	23 August 2019	23 Septem­ber 2019
Block A‑A-A‑E Elevations	AAAE-200 Rev.A	23 August 2019	23 Septem­ber 2019
Block A‑A-A‑E Floor Plans	AAAE-100 Rev. A	23 August 2019	23 Septem­ber 2019
Block A‑A-A‑E Extern­al 3D Views	AAAE-210 Rev. A	23 August 2019	23 Septem­ber 2019
Roads Con­struc­tion Details	906	-	30 Octo­ber 2019
Roads Kerbing Layout	905 Rev.2	11 Decem­ber 2019	13 Decem­ber 2019
Foul Water Drain­age Sections	903 Rev.1	09 Octo­ber 2019	30 Octo­ber 2019
Roads Long Sections	901	24 May 2019	30 Octo­ber 2019
Sur­face Water Drain­age Sections	904 Rev.1	09 Octo­ber 2019	30 Octo­ber 2019
Roads Lay­out	900 Rev.4	06 August 2019	30 Octo­ber 2019
Drain­age Man­hole Schedules	907	09 Octo­ber 2019	30 Octo­ber 2019
Flood Plan	909	02 Decem­ber 2019	02 Decem­ber 2019
Pro­posed Drain­age Layout	902 Rev.6	02 Decem­ber 2019	02 Decem­ber 2019
Drained Areas	910	02 Decem­ber 2019	02 Decem­ber 2019
Sup­port­ing Documents:
Design State­ment			23 Septem­ber 2019
Drain­age Impact Assessment	A/190054	01 Octo­ber 2019	30 Octo­ber 2019
Afford­able Hous­ing Statement	IAIV170030	24 Octo­ber 2019	31 Octo­ber 2019

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 6 24/01/2020

Con­fid­en­tial Doc­u­ment- Mar­ket­ing Review 2 of 2.	IAIV170030	24 Octo­ber 2019	31 Octo­ber 2019
Addi­tion­al Sup­port­ing Information	190054/GRD/08 Nov2019	08 Novem­ber 2019	08 Novem­ber 2019
Drain­age Main­ten­ance Information			02 Decem­ber 2019
Sur­face Water Drain­age Assessment			02 Decem­ber 2019
Scot­tish Water Capa­city Review		18 June 2019	02 Decem­ber 2019

*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 seeks plan­ning per­mis­sion for the erec­tion of 14 dwell­ing­houses with asso­ci­ated access, drain­age, ser­vice and land­scap­ing works. The devel­op­ment includes three blocks com­pris­ing: six ter­raced houses, 4 bun­ga­lows and 4 cot­tage flats. The dwell­ing­houses are all pro­posed to be afford­able units with a com­bin­a­tion of 10 social rent, 2 mid-mar­ket rent and 2 for low cost home own­er­ship. Of the 10 social ren­ted units, it is under­stood that four of these will be ​‘flex­ible’ I bed prop­er­ties which may form part of a FIT Homes Port­fo­lio. The applic­a­tion details state that ​“these are stra­tegic­ally import­ant due to their loc­a­tion to the new hos­pit­al and the poten­tial cli­ent group that would be alloc­ated.” The hous­ing accom­mod­a­tion sched­ule is as follows:

Num­ber of units	Num­ber of storeys	Accom­mod­a­tion type	Num­ber of bedrooms
3	2	House (Type A)	3
1	2	House (Type B)	4
4	1	Bun­ga­low (Type C)	1
2	2	Cot­tage Flat (Type D)	2
2	2	Cot­tage Flat (Type E)	3
2	2	House (Type F)	3

1. The three blocks of ter­raced houses are pro­posed to extend in a west-east­erly dir­ec­tion across the site and are sep­ar­ated by the two vehicu­lar access points into the site. The design of the ter­races includes a com­bin­a­tion of roof ori­ent­a­tions, clad with grey roof tiles. The walls are pro­posed to be fin­ished with white render and dark grey weather­board­ing. The sup­port­ing Design State­ment states that the ​“14 houses and flats pro­posed meet the min­im­um require­ments for Hous­ing for Vary­ing Needs”. The south­ern block (block B‑C-C‑C) com­prises a mix of one and two storey units with the two storey ele­ment meas­ur­ing 10 metres x 7 metres with a ridge height of approx­im­ately 8 metres. The single storey ele­ment of the block has a ridge height of 5 metres and meas­ures a total length of 25 metres with a width of 13 metres. The middle block (block A‑E-E‑E) com­prises attached, two storey units with a max­im­um ridge height of the block at 8 metres, an over­all length of 30 metres and a max­im­um width of approx­im­ately 12.5 metres. The north­ern block (block F‑F-D) also com­prises two storey units with a max­im­um ridge height of 9 metres, an over­all block length of approx­im­ately 27.5 metres and a max­im­um width of 11 metres.

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 6 24/01/2020

1. 22 vehicle park­ing spaces are pro­posed to be installed with­in the two court­yard areas on site, served by the two access points. Each unit of accom­mod­a­tion is pro­posed with its own private garden, which includes space for cycle and refuse stor­age and is enclosed by a 1.8 metre high, tim­ber fence. The east­ern site bound­ary is pro­posed to com­prise a mix of the 1.8 metre high, tim­ber fen­cing around the garden areas and 1.8 metre high, chain link fen­cing for the oth­er areas adja­cent to this site boundary.

2. Regard­ing soft land­scap­ing, the com­mun­al areas on site are pro­posed to be seeded with a grass mix and low heath­land shrub plant­ing is pro­posed along the road front­age of the site and with­in the com­mun­al park­ing areas. 20 row­an trees are also pro­posed to be planted along the road front­age on the west and three weep­ing cherry trees are pro­posed to be planted with­in the com­mun­al park­ing areas.

3. The applic­a­tion is sup­por­ted by the fol­low­ing documentation:

a. Design State­ment: out­lines the site con­straints and the design concept of the pro­posed development.

b. Drain­age Impact Assess­ment: this doc­u­ment states that foul water from the pro­posed devel­op­ment will be drained via a sep­ar­ate foul only sew­er which will con­nect to the exist­ing Scot­tish Water foul net­work. Regard­ing sur­face water arrange­ments, the roof water is pro­posed to be drained into a private sew­er with­in the site bound­ary with con­trolled dis­charge to the exist­ing Scot­tish Water sur­face water sew­er. The private park­ing areas are pro­posed to drain via por­ous block pav­ing to under­ly­ing sub­base which will be atten­u­ated in trenches below the por­ous pav­ing pri­or to dis­charge to the on-site sur­face water net­work. The exist­ing drain­age arrange­ments on site for the ham­mer­head access point are pro­posed to be retained for the pro­posed road access arrange­ments. Regard­ing main­ten­ance, the ham­mer­head drain­age is pro­posed to be adop­ted by High­land Coun­cil; Scot­tish Water are respons­ible for exist­ing adop­ted sew­ers to the north end of the site; and the on-site sur­face water and foul drain­age sys­tems will not be adop­ted and will remain the respons­ib­il­ity of the developer or their appoin­ted factor.

C. Sur­face Water Drain­age Assess­ment: The report provides detailed design cal­cu­la­tions and sim­u­la­tion res­ults for both the M30 + 30% event and M200 + 30% event, not­ing where required the crit­ic­al flood events all of which occur in the M200 + 30% event.

d. Drain­age Main­ten­ance Inform­a­tion: con­firms that the water drain­age sys­tems will not be adop­ted by Scot­tish Water or any loc­al author­ity and will there­fore, in terms of main­ten­ance, remain the respons­ib­il­ity of the developer or their appoin­ted factor.

e. Afford­able Hous­ing State­ment: This con­firms that all the dwell­ings and flats pro­posed are for afford­able hous­ing with 10 for social rent, 2 for mid-mar­ket rent and 2 for low cost home ownership.

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 6 24/01/2020

f. Con­fid­en­tial Mar­ket Review: The applic­ants have provided a mar­ket review and apprais­al in sup­port of the applic­a­tion, of which con­tains com­mer­cially sens­it­ive information.

1. Plans of the pro­pos­al are included with­in Appendix 1.

His­tory

1. Earli­er this year, a plan­ning applic­a­tion (ref­er­ence: 2019/0200/DET) was sub­mit­ted for the erec­tion of 11 houses and 4 flats on the applic­a­tion site. This applic­a­tion was with­drawn on 26 July 2019 due to the require­ment for fur­ther sur­veys and inform­a­tion to be under­taken to sup­port the proposal.

2. Of rel­ev­ance is the recent plan­ning his­tory for the adja­cent site to the west, at Spey House, which com­prised Phase I of the applicant’s over­all devel­op­ment of the two sites. Per­mis­sion was gran­ted on 24 August 2018 for the change of use and con­ver­sion of the Spey House office block to form 20 flats togeth­er with the erec­tion of 4 addi­tion­al flats and asso­ci­ated cycle and bin stores.

3. On the adja­cent site to the south of the applic­a­tion site, per­mis­sion was gran­ted for the erec­tion of a com­munity hos­pit­al (ref­er­ence: 2018/0266/DET) which is cur­rently under construction.

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	X
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
POLICY 9	CUL­TUR­AL HERITAGE
POLICY 10	RESOURCES	X
POLICY 11	DEVELOPER CON­TRI­BU­TIONS	X

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 6 24/01/2020

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/LDP15.pdf

1. The site is des­ig­nated in the Aviemore set­tle­ment state­ment of the Cairngorms Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2015 for eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment under the des­ig­na­tion EDI- Dal­faber Indus­tri­al Estate, where it states the fol­low­ing: the exist­ing Dal­faber Indus­tri­al Estate and Cairngorm Tech­no­logy Park provide oppor­tun­it­ies for eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment pro­pos­als to sup­port the eco­nomy of Aviemore and the sur­round­ing area. An area of 0.5Ha to the north of Dal­faber Indus­tri­al Estate is included to allow for future expan­sion when the cur­rent site reaches capa­city. Cur­rently used for inform­al recre­ation, ped­es­tri­an links through the site should be protected.”

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	X
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
Policy 9	Cul­tur­al Her­it­age Non-Stat­utory Guidance
Policy 10	Resources Non-Stat­utory Guidance	X
Policy 11	Developer Con­tri­bu­tions Sup­ple­ment­ary Guidance	X

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2020

1. The emer­ging Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan (“Pro­posed Plan”) which will cov­er the peri­od of 2020 – 2025 is cur­rently being pro­gressed. The pro­posed plan has been through a pub­lic con­sulta­tion pro­cess and the form­al responses have been assessed and sub­mit­ted along with all oth­er rel­ev­ant mater­i­als to Scot­tish Min­is­ters for exam­in­a­tion. As the exam­in­a­tion of the Pro­posed Plan is yet to start, the Pro­posed Plan and its con­tents cur­rently carry lim­ited weight.

2. With­in the Pro­posed Plan, the applic­a­tion site forms part of a lar­ger alloc­ated site under C3: Land south of Dal­faber Indus­tri­al Estate. The site under the emer­ging loc­al plan has been alloc­ated for com­munity uses and includes land cur­rently being developed for the new Aviemore Hospital.

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 6 24/01/2020

CON­SULTA­TIONS

Sum­mary of the main issues raised by consultees

1. The High­land Coun­cil Flood Risk Man­age­ment Team ini­tially objec­ted to the applic­a­tion due to insuf­fi­cient drain­age inform­a­tion. Fol­low­ing the sub­mis­sion of a drain­age impact assess­ment by the applic­ants, the Flood Risk Man­age­ment Team, main­tained their objec­tion request­ing fur­ther inform­a­tion to demon­strate suf­fi­cient drain­age pro­pos­als for the scheme. Fol­low­ing the latest sup­port­ing inform­a­tion includ­ing flood plan/​drains plans, sur­face water drain­age assess­ment and drain­age main­ten­ance scheme, the Flood Risk Man­age­ment Team con­firmed the remov­al of their ori­gin­al objec­tion as suf­fi­cient drain­age inform­a­tion has been provided. The Team note that the sub­mit­ted inform­a­tion demon­strates that the drain­age sys­tem can atten­u­ate sur­face water for key storm events up to the I in 200 year storm event (inclus­ive of 30% cli­mate change) and that the minor amount of flood­ing that may occur dur­ing a one in 200 year event would be man­aged with­in the park­ing area without reach­ing a sig­ni­fic­ant depth. The applic­ant has provided evid­ence that Scot­tish Water will accept sur­face water drain­age up to 2.2 L/S from the site and the main­ten­ance inform­a­tion con­firms the inspec­tion of the flow con­trolling ori­fice, bi- annu­ally and after storm events.

2. The High­land Coun­cil Con­tam­in­ated Land Officer notes that fol­low­ing a check of their records, there does not appear to be a pre­vi­ously con­tam­in­at­ive use and fur­ther inform­a­tion or invest­ig­a­tion for con­tam­in­a­tion is there­fore not recommended.

3. The High­land Coun­cil Trans­port Plan­ning Team provided the fol­low­ing com­ments on the latest sub­mis­sion details:

a. Access and Lay­out: Vehicu­lar access to the devel­op­ment is from an exist­ing private road that joins Dal­faber Drive. The Coun­cil has received a Road Con­struc­tion Con­sent applic­a­tion for the private road to be con­sidered for adop­tion by the Coun­cil, e.g. for the road to become part of the pub­lic road net­work. This devel­op­ment pro­poses to alter the exist­ing road lay­out by shift­ing the 2 exist­ing site entrances fur­ther south, as intim­ated in the Roads Lay­out. To enhance ped­es­tri­an con­nectiv­ity and assist reduce traffic speeds in/​out of the res­id­en­tial site, the pref­er­ence of the Trans­port Plan­ning Team and their recom­mend­a­tion is that drive­way cross­ing type accesses are built rather than the pro­posed bell­mouth arrangement;

b. Vis­ib­il­ity: The pro­posed vis­ib­il­ity splays of 2.4 metres by 45 metres as shown on the Roads Lay­out are acceptable.

C. Park­ing: Com­mun­al vehicle park­ing arrange­ments are being pro­moted at this devel­op­ment. The Trans­port Plan­ning Team con­sider that the level of park­ing pro­vi­sion is accept­able based on 1.2 res­id­ent spaces per unit and 0.3 vis­it­or spaces per unit equat­ing to 21 spaces and that 22 spaces are being provided. Each res­id­en­tial unit has its own secure garden where bicycles can be stored.

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 6 24/01/2020

d. Waste Col­lec­tion: The Trans­port Plan­ning Team note that the exist­ing access road will be the route to the pro­posed hos­pit­al. They con­sider that dur­ing waste col­lec­tion oper­a­tions, the free flow of traffic to the hos­pit­al will be dis­rup­ted on waste col­lec­tion days, due to the pro­posed waste col­lec­tion areas being sited on the hos­pit­al road. They there­fore recom­mend that altern­at­ive waste col­lec­tion areas are sought prefer­ably with­in the development.

e. Drain­age: The Team con­sider that the pro­posed drain­age arrange­ments are acceptable.

f. Adop­tion: The pro­posed lim­it of adop­tion as illus­trated on the Roads Lay­out Plan is con­sidered acceptable.

g. Con­sulta­tion Sum­mary: In prin­ciple, the Trans­port Plan­ning Team con­cludes that they sup­port this devel­op­ment sub­ject to the com­ments raised being resolved regard­ing access and lay­out and waste collection.

1. The High­land Coun­cil Hous­ing Officer has no objec­tion to this plan­ning application.

2. The High­land Coun­cil Envir­on­ment­al Health Officer has no com­ment relat­ing to this application.

3. High­land Coun­cil Cor­por­ate Address Gaz­etteer Team (CAG) wish to high­light to the applic­ant, the street nam­ing and num­ber­ing pro­cess and encour­age the applic­ant to sub­mit a request in the event plan­ning per­mis­sion is granted

4. Scot­tish Water has no objec­tion but high­light that this does not con­firm that the pro­posed devel­op­ment can cur­rently be ser­viced. They note that there is cur­rently suf­fi­cient capa­city in the Aviemore Water Treat­ment Works and there is cur­rently suf­fi­cient capa­city in the Aviemore Waste Water Treat­ment Works. How­ever, they advise that once a form­al con­nec­tion applic­a­tion is sub­mit­ted to the Agency after full plan­ning per­mis­sion has been gran­ted, they will review capa­city at that time and advise the applic­ant accordingly.

5. Scot­tish Water notes that regard­ing sur­face water, they will not accept any sur­face water con­nec­tions into their com­bined sew­er system.

6. Net­work Rail con­siders that the pro­pos­al will have no impact on the net­work rail rail­way infra­struc­ture and there­fore have no objec­tions to this application.

7. CNPA Eco­logy Officer notes that the site has recently been cleared and has no cur­rent eco­lo­gic­al interest. The Officer states that the pro­posed SUDs fea­tures have no addi­tion­al biod­iversity bene­fits or amen­ity in recom­men­ded by CIRIA Suds Manual

8. The Officer sug­gests integ­rat­ing some swales or bio-reten­tion areas with­in the com­mun­al plant­ing areas to improve diversity and also improve reten­tion peri­ods with­in the scheme. The Officer sug­gests spe­cies rich grass­land with a high pro­por­tion of dev­ils bit sca­bi­ous would also be more appro­pri­ate than the pro­posed cal­luna beds

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 6 24/01/2020

and the con­struc­tion of bee banks on the north and south­ern edge of the devel­op­ment are also recommended.

1. CNPA Land­scape Officer con­siders that the pro­posed land­scap­ing is not appro­pri­ate for the site and sug­gests a pre­ferred approach of spe­cies rich grass land around the peri­phery of the site with a well-developed tree struc­ture that allows for an integ­rated mat­rix of land­scape areas. The Officer con­siders that this will add to the visu­al interest, enhance the build­ing forms and provide a rich­er set of micro hab­it­ats for biod­iversity. Tree and grass spe­cies are suggested.

2. CNPA Out­door Access Officer is sat­is­fied there are no sig­ni­fic­ant con­cerns or con­sid­er­a­tions relat­ing to pub­lic access from the pro­pos­al. The site presently com­prises open, vacant land, bounded by the Strath­spey Rail­way and the former Call Centre/​access road. The officer notes that the pro­posed devel­op­ment will be served by both adop­ted and non-adop­ted foot­ways and cycle stor­age oppor­tun­it­ies will be available.

3. Aviemore and Vicin­ity Com­munity Coun­cil sup­ports the applic­a­tion not­ing that the devel­op­ment is a good use for the site and the design and ori­ent­a­tion of the build­ings util­ises the avail­able space to its max­im­um. The Com­munity Council’s full com­ments can be found at Appendix 3.

REP­RES­ENT­A­TIONS

1. Cop­ies of all pub­lic responses can be viewed at Appendix 2. One let­ter of rep­res­ent­a­tion has been received from the Aviemore Health Centre who sup­port the devel­op­ment of the site for hous­ing and have no objec­tions to the design although note con­cern of poten­tial con­struc­tion traffic dis­rupt­ing the traffic flow to the hospital.

2. A fur­ther let­ter of rep­res­ent­a­tion has been received from the Strath­spey Rail­way Com­pany provid­ing gen­er­al com­ments on the scheme. They con­sider that the devel­op­ment is unlikely to increase road traffic over Dal­faber Level Cross­ing but sug­gest that an assess­ment of this should be under­taken. They also raise con­cern that the devel­op­ment may restrict the vis­ib­il­ity of their loco­mot­ive drivers of road traffic approach­ing the level cross­ing. They con­firm that the drain­age details pro­posed should not affect the SRC and that the cur­rent smoke, steam and train noises will con­tin­ue. The SRC query the bound­ary treat­ments between the pro­pos­al and their land.

APPRAIS­AL

1. The main plan­ning con­sid­er­a­tions are: the prin­ciple of devel­op­ment; the impact upon land­scape, lay­out and design; the envir­on­ment­al impacts; access and ser­vi­cing and developer contributions.

Prin­ciple of Development

1. Policy I: New Hous­ing Devel­op­ment of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2015 provides sup­port for new hous­ing devel­op­ment within

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 6 24/01/2020

set­tle­ments where: they are on an iden­ti­fied site or where they rein­force and enhance the char­ac­ter of the set­tle­ment, max­im­ising oppor­tun­it­ies for infill, con­ver­sion, small scale devel­op­ment, use of derel­ict or under­used land or the redevel­op­ment of land. In this case, the applic­a­tion site lies with­in the defined set­tle­ment bound­ary of Aviemore involving the devel­op­ment of vacant, under­used land. Under the gen­er­al terms of Policy I there is policy sup­port for hous­ing sub­ject to the devel­op­ment rein­for­cing and enhan­cing the char­ac­ter of the set­tle­ment, which will be con­sidered later in this report.

1. How­ever, under the adop­ted Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2015, the site lies with­in a wider des­ig­nated area alloc­ated for eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment use whereby Policy 2: Sup­port­ing Eco­nom­ic Growth applies. Cri­terion 2.4 of the policy states:

a. ​“pro­pos­als for the altern­at­ive use of sites or build­ings cur­rently in, or last used for eco­nom­ic and employ­ment pur­poses will only be sup­por­ted where this pro­motes the sus­tain­able use of land in accord­ance with SPP, the NPPP and oth­er LDP policies, and where: a) it is sat­is­fact­or­ily demon­strated that is not prac­tic­al for fin­an­cial or oth­er reas­ons to con­tin­ue with the exist­ing or last eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment, or employ­ment use; or b) the site or build­ings are unsuit­ably loc­ated and impact adversely on the built or nat­ur­al envir­on­ment, loc­al char­ac­ter or neigh­bour­ing prop­er­ties; and/​or c) the exist­ing use can be appro­pri­ately re-loc­ated to anoth­er suit­able site.”

1. The agent has sub­mit­ted addi­tion­al inform­a­tion to demon­strate accord­ance with policy require­ments, includ­ing a mar­ket review. The details state that the site, for com­mer­cial pur­poses, has been through a mar­ket­ing cam­paign by agents Gra­ham and Sib­bald, how­ever, there was no demand for the site. The agents also con­firm that with the redevel­op­ment of the adja­cent Spey House to afford­able hous­ing togeth­er with the devel­op­ment of a new com­munity hos­pit­al on the remainder of the Tech­no­logy Park site, it would seem appro­pri­ate to provide fur­ther afford­able hous­ing on the applic­a­tion site. The com­pat­ib­il­ity of uses with­in the area is also a mater­i­al con­sid­er­a­tion. Some com­mer­cial uses would be inap­pro­pri­ate in this loc­a­tion, such as an intens­ive, more indus­tri­al­ised, com­mer­cial use, which could adversely affect the amen­ity of neigh­bour­ing land uses, with par­tic­u­lar regard to the adja­cent, res­id­en­tial site. There­fore this lim­its the type of com­mer­cial devel­op­ment that would be accept­able on this site, not­with­stand­ing the mar­ket­ing activ­it­ies that have been under­taken to demon­strate com­mer­cial demand levels. Over­all, it is con­sidered that the sub­mit­ted inform­a­tion, on bal­ance, adequately demon­strates that it is not prac­tic­al to con­tin­ue with a pro­posed eco­nom­ic use of the land as required by policy and the loss of eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment land is con­sidered to be accept­able in this case, provided that the new use is con­sidered appro­pri­ate and sus­tain­able in terms of the oth­er Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan policies.

2. It is worth not­ing that with­in the Pro­posed Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2020, the site des­ig­na­tion is for a com­munity use. The pro­posed use of this applic­a­tion looks to provide fur­ther afford­able hous­ing to the com­munity. This par­tic­u­lar site is con­sidered to be suit­ably loc­ated for new hous­ing, in prin­ciple, being in an area of mixed uses with hous­ing to the west and fur­ther eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment land well sep­ar­ated to the north on the oth­er side of Dal­faber Drive. The site is con­sidered to be sus­tain­ably loc­ated in terms of prox­im­ity to the facil­it­ies and amen­it­ies of Aviemore. The prin­ciple of intro­du­cing hous­ing on this site will ful­fil a com­munity hous­ing need, deliv­er­ing 100%

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 6 24/01/2020

afford­able hous­ing on an under­used par­cel of land and the pro­pos­al is there­fore con­sidered to be com­pat­ible with the pro­posed com­munity use designation.

1. Cri­terion 1.4 of Policy I: New Hous­ing Devel­op­ment requires that pro­vi­sion gen­er­ally be made for 25% afford­able hous­ing on devel­op­ment sites. In this case, the devel­op­ment pro­poses the erec­tion of 14 dwell­ings, all of which are pro­posed to be afford­able units. The policy require­ment is there­fore far exceeded. The Hous­ing Ser­vice at High­land Coun­cil has no objec­tions to the scheme.

2. On bal­ance, the prin­ciple of the pro­pos­al is con­sidered to be accept­able in accord­ance with the require­ments of Policy 1: New Hous­ing Devel­op­ment and Policy 2: Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2015, sub­ject to the oth­er plan­ning con­sid­er­a­tions out­lined below.

Land­scape Impacts, Lay­out and Design

1. Policy 5: Land­scape of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2015 pre­sumes against devel­op­ment, which does not con­serve and enhance the land­scape char­ac­ter and spe­cial qual­it­ies of the Nation­al Park and in par­tic­u­lar the set­ting of the pro­posed devel­op­ment. This is rein­forced by Policy 3: New Devel­op­ment, which seeks to ensure that all new devel­op­ment is sym­path­et­ic to the tra­di­tion­al pat­tern and char­ac­ter of the sur­round­ing areas, loc­al ver­nacu­lar and loc­al dis­tinct­ive­ness. It is there­fore clear that policy requires all new devel­op­ment to enhance and com­ple­ment both the Nation­al Park and the char­ac­ter of the set­tle­ment itself, using land­scape to com­ple­ment the setting.

2. In this regard, the dens­ity of the devel­op­ment has been reduced from the pre­vi­ously with­drawn scheme by one unit of accom­mod­a­tion provid­ing bet­ter sized amen­ity spaces for occu­pants of the dwell­ings. The use of dif­fer­ent roof ori­ent­a­tions, ridge heights, dormer fea­tures and the use of stag­ger­ing the units of accom­mod­a­tion, helps to cre­ate visu­al interest and breaks up the build­ing mass of the three blocks. The design and palette of extern­al mater­i­als and fin­ishes for the dwell­ings, ref­er­ences the adja­cent res­id­en­tial devel­op­ment of Spey House and are con­sidered to be in keep­ing with the estab­lished char­ac­ter of the area.

3. Regard­ing soft land­scap­ing, the com­mun­al areas on site are pro­posed to be seeded with a grass mix and low heath­land shrub plant­ing is pro­posed along the road front­age of the site and with­in the com­mun­al park­ing areas. 20 row­an trees are also pro­posed to be planted along the road front­age on the west and three weep­ing cherry trees are pro­posed to be planted with­in the com­mun­al park­ing areas. The CNPA Land­scape Officer con­siders that the pro­posed land­scap­ing is not appro­pri­ate for the site and sug­gests a pre­ferred approach of spe­cies rich grass land around the peri­phery of the site with the inclu­sion of a vari­ety of nat­ive tree spe­cies to add to the visu­al interest, enhance the build­ing forms and provide a rich­er set of micro hab­it­ats for biod­iversity. These amend­ments are con­sidered to help link the land­scape char­ac­ter of the site with the adja­cent land­scap­ing treat­ment of the Com­munity Hos­pit­al, which will enhance the sites abil­ity to facil­it­ate nat­ive spe­cies. These refine­ments can be dealt with by plan­ning con­di­tion for the agree­ment and imple­ment­a­tion of a revised land­scap­ing plan and main­ten­ance scheme.

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 6 24/01/2020

1. In terms of res­id­en­tial amen­ity, Policy 3: Sus­tain­able Design of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2015 seeks to ensure that new devel­op­ment pro­tects the amen­ity cur­rently enjoyed by neigh­bours. No com­ments have been from neigh­bour­ing occu­pants regard­ing amen­ity issues. The lay­out of the devel­op­ment has been designed to min­im­ise any poten­tial impacts the pro­pos­al may have on neigh­bour­ing amen­ity adja­cent res­id­en­tial sites, such as Spey House. This includes: impacts of over­look­ing, over­bear­ing, and loss of light. It is con­sidered that there is a good dis­tance between the pro­posed dwell­ings and the adja­cent land uses to not pre­ju­dice oth­er future uses in the area due to the site being self-contained.

2. Policy 3: Sus­tain­able Design also requires new devel­op­ment to provide appro­pri­ate levels of private amen­ity ground. In terms of the new houses them­selves, they have been designed to ensure that there are no issues of over­look­ing win­dows with suf­fi­cient garden space and bound­ary treat­ments to provide pri­vacy for all res­id­ents with ready access to the exist­ing net­work of access routes with­in the area.

3. Whilst there will inev­it­ably be a degree of dis­turb­ance and noise dur­ing con­struc­tion this can be min­im­ised by good con­struc­tion prac­tises and pro­vi­sion of a con­struc­tion traffic man­age­ment plan designed to set out meas­ures to try to reduce dis­turb­ance as far as feasible.

4. On this basis, the pro­pos­al is con­sidered to accord with Policy 3: Sus­tain­able Design and Policy 5: Land­scape of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2015.

Envir­on­ment­al Impacts

1. Policy 4: Nat­ur­al Her­it­age of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2015 seeks to ensure that there is no adverse impact upon pro­tec­ted spe­cies or biodiversity.

2. The applic­a­tion site has been recently cleared and there­fore has no cur­rent eco­lo­gic­al interest. It is con­sidered that the con­di­tion­ing of a revised land­scap­ing scheme fol­low­ing any grant of plan­ning per­mis­sion provides the oppor­tun­ity for the site to provide a biod­iversity enhance­ment to the area.

3. In respect of oth­er envir­on­ment­al mat­ters there are no issues in respect of either con­tam­in­ated land or flood­ing. The High­land Council’s Envir­on­ment­al Health and Con­tam­in­ated Land Officers have no objec­tion to the scheme and con­firm that there does not appear to be a pre­vi­ously con­tam­in­at­ive use of the site.

4. In these over­all cir­cum­stances and sub­ject to appro­pri­ate plan­ning con­di­tions, the applic­a­tion is con­sidered to com­ply with Policy 4: Nat­ur­al Her­it­age and Policy 10: Resources of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2015.

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 6 24/01/2020

Ser­vi­cing and Access

1. Policy 3: Sus­tain­able Design and Policy 10: Resources of the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan 2015 set out the need for new devel­op­ment to be sat­is­fact­or­ily ser­viced and without harm to resources or the environment.

2. In this case, roof water is pro­posed to be drained into a private sew­er with­in the site bound­ary with a con­trolled dis­charge to the exist­ing Scot­tish Water sur­face water sew­er. The private park­ing areas are pro­posed to drain via por­ous block pav­ing to under­ly­ing sub­base which will be atten­u­ated in trenches pri­or to dis­charge to the on- site sur­face water drain­age net­work. The exist­ing drain­age arrange­ments on site for the ham­mer­head access point are pro­posed to be retained for the pro­posed road access arrange­ments. Regard­ing main­ten­ance, the bell­mouth access drain­age is pro­posed to be adop­ted by High­land Coun­cil; Scot­tish Water are respons­ible for exist­ing adop­ted sew­ers to the north end of the site; and the on-site sur­face water and foul drain­age sys­tems will not be adop­ted and will remain the respons­ib­il­ity of the developer or their appoin­ted factor.

3. Regard­ing foul drain­age, the devel­op­ment is pro­posed to be served by a sep­ar­ate foul only sew­er which will con­nect to the exist­ing Scot­tish Water foul net­work. Scot­tish Water