Item6Appendix3Objection20190275DETNew

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 6 Appendix 3 15/11/2019

AGENDA ITEM 6

APPENDIX 3

2019/0275/DET

OBJEC­TION

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The Dulaig Seafield Aven­ue Grant­own-on-Spey PH26 3JG 30 Septem­ber 2019

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Plan­ning Team 14 The Square Grant­own on Spey PH26 3HG

Objec­tion to Plan­ning Applic­a­tion 2019/0275/DET — Erec­tion of 13 res­id­en­tial units (8 cot­tage flats, 4 semi-detached houses, 1 bun­ga­low) (afford­able homes) in Land 150M NW Of Beachen Court Grantown-on-Spey

I have no spe­cif­ic objec­tion in prin­ciple to the con­struc­tion of the 13 homes them­selves, how­ever I have sub­stan­tial objec­tions to the plans sub­mit­ted in the sup­port­ing doc­u­ments to this plan­ning application.

My objec­tions aim to cov­er the key areas of con­cern I have with the pub­lished sup­port­ing inform­a­tion. There are a num­ber of spe­cif­ic issues which I believe need either to be fully resolved before this applic­a­tion goes before the plan­ning com­mit­tee for decision or prop­erly con­di­tioned as part of the plan­ning decision: these are high­lighted in bold in my objections.

1. Pro­posed Design of Houses

I object to the design of the pro­posed houses as 12 of the 13 houses are two storeys high. Houses on this devel­op­ment should prefer­ably be no more than 1½ storeys high and cer­tainly no more than 1¾ storeys. My reas­ons for this objec­tion and mat­ters which require cla­ri­fic­a­tion are:

1. It is claimed in the plan­ning let­ter dated 9 July 2019 sub­mit­ted by Ness Plan­ning that the pro­posed two storey houses will be below the height of the pre­vi­ously pro­posed 1¾ storey houses. Addi­tion­ally, draw­ing 1742_BT2_00_100 rev C includes a sketch indic­at­ing that the two storey ridge height is less than the 1¾ storey equi­val­ent. In com­par­is­on, in plan­ning applic­a­tion 2017/0286/DET the sup­port­ing argu­ment for two storey houses was that they would only be 600mm high­er at the roof ridge than 1¾ storey equi­val­ent, now what appears to be the same two storey house design has roof ridge heights below that of 1¾ storey equi­val­ent houses.

The accur­acy of the state­ments on roof ridge height in this applic­a­tion need to be veri­fied and evid­ence of the roof ridge heights pro­posed vs. the actu­al roof ridge heights of the adja­cent 1¾ storey houses build under plan­ning con­sent 2015/0394/DET com­pared. Addi­tion­ally, if the asser­tions on lower roof ridge

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heights in this applic­a­tion are cor­rect, then the only way this can be achieved is by redu­cing the roof pitch. The Plan­ning Author­ity should check with Build­ing Con­trol wheth­er the reduced roof pitch heights are acceptable.

1. Just as import­ant as keep­ing roof ridge heights as low as pos­sible, is the floor level of the pro­posed houses. Draw­ing 1754_PL-00 – 200, shows what appear to be pro­posed floor levels for the applic­a­tion houses. If these heights are FFLs then it would appear that with the excep­tion of plots 15 – 18, the pro­posed FFLs are slightly lower than the heights pro­posed in plan­ning per­mis­sion 2016/0060/DET. This slight lower­ing of levels, if cor­rect, is appreciated.

I recom­mend that the Plan­ning Author­ity checks that these indic­at­ive heights are the pro­posed FFLs for the applic­a­tion houses.

1. The Devel­op­ment Brief for this site which forms part of the adop­ted CNPA Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan states in para­graph 42: ​“Vari­ety and rich­ness of size and shape of houses and mater­i­al use is required, ensur­ing that build­ing shapes reflect the prin­ciples and pro­por­tions of tra­di­tion­al hous­ing in the area. Build­ing heights are accept­able up to 1.5 storeys.” a. The ori­gin­al Design & Access State­ment approved by CNPA as part of 2016/0060/DET states that ​“Houses shall be no more than 1¾ storeys in height”. b. The house types approved as part of the 10 High­land Coun­cil houses (2015/0394/DET) are all 1¾ storeys. c. The Design State­ment states, ​“All homes have been designed to rein­ter­pret ver­nacu­lar forms in a con­tem­por­ary man­ner. Simple forms have been adop­ted where pitched roofs are used with min­im­al eaves and verge over­hangs”. Two storey houses of this design to not reflect the ver­nacu­lar house designs of the area, but only pro­mul­gate the few bad designs of two storey houses in the loc­al­ity. The vast major­ity of hous­ing in the loc­al area is 1.5 or 1½ storey houses.

The two storey house designs are not in line with the design prin­ciples set out in the devel­op­ment brief and sub­sequent con­sent 2016/0060/DET, and do not com­ple­ment and respond to exist­ing dwell­ings sur­round­ing the site or ver­nacu­lar designs in the wider area.

Fur­ther­more, I believe that approv­al of these house designs would be con­trary to the Policies with­in the CNPA Loc­al Devel­op­ment Plan, namely: Policy 1 — New Hous­ing Policy, in par­tic­u­lar para­graphs 3.7 and 3.8 Policy 3 — Sus­tain­able Design, in par­tic­u­lar para­graph b of the sec­tion on Design Statements.

It is claimed that the two storey houses would be cheap­er to build than the 1¾ storey houses built for High­land Coun­cil under plan­ning per­mis­sion 2015/0394/DET, how­ever no evid­ence for this has been provided. CNPA Plan­ning Author­ity should ask for real evid­ence to sup­port these claims. Even if cost­ings can sup­port the applicant’s claims, rel­at­ive costs should not be the only driver, instead qual­ity of design should be the main driver sub­ject to roof ridge height con­sid­er­a­tions above.

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1. The sup­port­ing Design State­ment con­tains numer­ous unsup­por­ted and likely to be unen­force­able claims. For example, in addi­tion to the mat­ters dis­cussed above, the sec­tion on Sus­tain­able Use of Resources is mean­ing­less with all the claims being caveated by words like ​“where prac­tic­al”, ​“where pos­sible” and ​“where eco­nom­ic­ally feasible”.

I there­fore object to the two storey designs for 12 out of the 13 pro­posed homes. CNPA Plan­ning Author­ity should reject this applic­a­tion and request that it is re- sub­mit­ted with appro­pri­ate 1.5 or 1½ storey designs. In my view the designs used in plan­ning per­mis­sion 2015/0394/DET would be satisfactory.

1. Tree Pro­tec­tion

I am con­cerned about sev­er­al import­ant errors con­cern­ing the pro­tec­tion of trees on neigh­bour­ing land. These are:

a. The Plan­ning Applic­a­tion form incor­rectly states that there are no trees on or adja­cent to the applic­a­tion site. This is incor­rect as numer­ous trees on the east­ern bound­ary of the applic­a­tion site with The Dulaig which cur­rently have some form of pro­tec­tion. As a min­im­um this tree root pro­tec­tion must remain for the dur­a­tion of the con­struc­tion of this devel­op­ment. Addi­tion­ally, there are some trees on the north­ern edge of the applic­a­tion site (on the bound­ary with Revoan) which might require protection.

b. The Land­scape Pro­pos­als Plant­ing Plan (Keith L Wood Land­scape Design drwg HHA 100.19 SL-01 rev B) is highly mis­lead­ing in the draw­ing of the applic­a­tion site bound­ary (edged in red), imply­ing that little tree root pro­tec­tion is required. Clar­ity is required on where the applic­a­tion site bound­ary lies on its east­ern edge as:

• drwg 1754_PL_90_100 Rev C shows this bound­ary to be the wooden fence line which is the prop­erty bound­ary fence of The Dulaig.
• drwg HHA 100.19 SL-01 rev B appears to show this bound­ary to be approx­im­ately where the exist­ing tree root pro­tec­tion fence is posi­tioned. Any­one solely read­ing the lat­ter draw­ing could eas­ily mis­in­ter­pret this bound­ary to be the wooden fence prop­erty bound­ary and con­strue that the draw­ing shows that little or no tree root pro­tec­tion is neces­sary. Addi­tion­ally, the tree pro­tec­tion plan referred to in this draw­ing is not the one approved by CNPA – the approved draw­ing is dated 7 Feb­ru­ary 2017.

c. I notice that the tree root pro­tec­tion draw­ing approved by CNPA Plan­ning Author­ity under plan­ning per­mis­sion 2016/0060/DET does not adequately pro­tect the roots of one of the major trees on the bound­ary with The Dulaig – namely tree 15 (Tsuga Het­ero­phylla). The tree root pro­tec­tion area should extend over 6 metres into the applic­a­tion site (and that is based on a tree sur­vey which is now over 4 years old). This root pro­tec­tion area, by my cal­cu­la­tions extends into the applic­a­tion site and is not adequately pro­tec­ted by the cur­rent tree root pro­tec­tion fence. The Land­scape Pro­pos­als Plant­ing Plan sup­port­ing this applic­a­tion also sup­ports my asser­tions that the exist­ing tree root pro­tec­tion fence inad­equately pro­tects this tree.

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d. Plan­ning per­mis­sion 2016/0060/DET con­tained a con­di­tion (Con­di­tion 13) on the install­a­tion of a cut off drain near the east­ern bound­ary of the applic­a­tion site. This applic­a­tion is silent on the main­ten­ance of this drain whilst con­struc­tion work is in progress.

Actions neces­sary:

• These numer­ous errors in sup­port­ing draw­ings and the applic­a­tion form itself need to be cor­rec­ted pri­or to this applic­a­tion being con­sidered by the Plan­ning Committee.
• The evid­ence (the tree sur­vey) on which the exist­ing tree root pro­tec­tion plans is now over 4 years out of date and requires updat­ing before new tree root pro­tec­tion areas are approved.
• New tree root pro­tec­tion plans need to adequately pro­tect all trees on the site bound­ary and in par­tic­u­lar be exten­ded to pro­tect tree 15 (Tsuga Het­ero­phylla), espe­cially when the area of con­struc­tion work pro­posed by this plan­ning applic­a­tion over­laps this tree’s root pro­tec­tion area.
• there needs to be a con­di­tion requir­ing the pro­tec­tion and main­ten­ance of the cut off drain approved under plan­ning per­mis­sion 2016/0060/DET.

1. Work­ing Hours

An inform­at­ive on restrict­ing con­struc­tion work­ing hours was included in plan­ning per­mis­sion 2016/0060/DET and 2017/0286/DET. These inform­at­ives have been con­sist­ently ignored by the developer, with work on numer­ous times start­ing at 06.30 on Sat­urdays and very reg­u­larly on week­days going on until 20.00 or 21.00 at night. There has also been Sunday work­ing. If this is denied, I have many examples from timed pho­to­graphs and videos. I recog­nise that noise is inev­it­able dur­ing con­struc­tion, but the con­tract­ors need to be aware of the dis­rup­tion they cause in this semi-rur­al envir­on­ment and try to min­im­ise noise, even dur­ing nor­mal work­ing hours.

The amen­ity of neigh­bour­ing prop­er­ties needs to be respec­ted – e,g,:

• there are young fam­il­ies liv­ing beside this development
• The Dulaig (which imme­di­ately adjoins the applic­a­tion site) oper­ates one of the top Bed & Break­fasts in Scot­land. Vis­it­ors to a Nation­al Park should not expect to be awakened by con­struc­tion noise, nor to have such noise going on late into the even­ing. We were phoned some weeks ago by a neigh­bour in Rhuarden Court (which is fur­ther away from the cur­rent devel­op­ment) check­ing wheth­er we were at home and ask­ing if our burg­lar alarm had been going off all day. We had to inform them that what they were hear­ing was the revers­ing noise from one of the con­struc­tion vehicles and noises from oth­er con­struc­tion plant.

The noise out­side of advised con­struc­tion hours asso­ci­ated with the two plan­ning per­mis­sions 2016/0060/DET and 2017/0286/DET has been and remains totally unac­cept­able and on occa­sions reg­u­larly breaches Pub­lic Nuis­ance legis­la­tion. The con­struc­tion work asso­ci­ated with the 13 houses in this applic­a­tion will be much closer to The Dulaig B&B. In addi­tion, as the oth­er new homes are com­pleted and occu­pied, there will be more fam­il­ies liv­ing close to this pro­posed development.

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If this plan­ning applic­a­tion is approved, the decision notice must make reas­on­able con­struc­tion work­ing hours an enforce­able plan­ning condition.

My com­ments above have high­lighted a num­ber of errors and omis­sions in this plan­ning applic­a­tion. There are many more errors and omis­sions includ­ing no inclu­sion of con­struc­tion plans, waste man­age­ment plans etc. Col­lect­ively this applic­a­tion does not meet the qual­ity stand­ards of what is ostens­ibly has been draf­ted and sub­mit­ted by a pro­fes­sion­al team. Clearly qual­ity stand­ards have slipped badly since the days that I was involved in the draft­ing and sub­mis­sion of plan­ning applications.

Yours faith­fully,

Dr Gor­don Bulloch

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Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Plan­ning Team 14 The Square Grant­own on Spey PH26 3HG

The Dulaig Seafield Aven­ue Grant­own-on-Spey PH26 3JG 1 Novem­ber 2019

Addendum to my Objec­tion to Plan­ning Applic­a­tion 2019/0275/DET — Erec­tion of 13 res­id­en­tial units (8 cot­tage flats, 4 semi-detached houses, 1 bun­ga­low) (afford­able homes) in Land 150M NW of Beachen Court Grantown-on-Spey

Res­ult­ing from the sup­ple­ment­ary inform­a­tion sub­mit­ted by the applic­ant after the end of the pub­lic con­sulta­tion peri­od, I have some com­ments I wish to add to my ori­gin­al objec­tion dated 30 Septem­ber 2019. I note that the sup­ple­ment­ary inform­a­tion provided by the applic­ant includes:

1. An admis­sion that that the pro­posed two storey houses will not (as ori­gin­ally claimed) have ridge heights lower than the equi­val­ent 1¾ storey houses, but that the ridge heights are now stated to be some 500mm high­er than the equi­val­ent 1¾ storey houses i.e. approx­im­ately a metre high­er than was claimed in the ori­gin­al sup­port­ing documents..
2. FFL heights have now been added to the sec­tion drawing.

My com­ments con­tained in this addendum focus on these changes, but for the sake of clar­ity my ori­gin­al objec­tion let­ter dated 30 Septem­ber 2019 still stands in its entirety.

It should be noted that I iden­ti­fied the error in the claimed roof ridge heights and brought it to the atten­tion of the Plan­ning Author­ity: to my know­ledge it was not picked up by oth­er parties. I not find it cred­ible that a pro­fes­sion­al plan­ning con­sult­ant and archi­tect could make such a fun­da­ment­al mis­take on roof ridge heights, and then use this to pro­mote their argu­ment for two storey house designs. This ​‘mis­take’ should alert the Plan­ning Author­ity and the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee to double check any oth­er asser­tions made by the applicant’s con­sult­ants to sup­port this application.

My argu­ment against hav­ing two storey house designs is fur­ther sup­por­ted by the fact that the roof heights will be 500mm high­er than the neigh­bour­ing equi­val­ent 1¾ storey houses built for The High­land Coun­cil under plan­ning per­mis­sion 2015/0394/DET and occu­pied from August 2018. The applicant’s plan­ning con­sult­ant con­tin­ues to try to jus­ti­fy two storey houses by the latest asser­tion, “….This iden­ti­fies that the pro­posed 2 storey units will be some 500mm high­er than the 1 ½ units. How­ever, none of the pro­posed build­ings are high­er than the units already con­struc­ted on site and in this way reflects the scale of devel­op­ment on site”. This is yet anoth­er com­pletely mis­lead­ing com­ment. Build­ing the

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houses in this cur­rent applic­a­tion to the design suite used for the neigh­bour­ing 10 houses recently com­pleted for The High­land Coun­cil under 2015/0394/DET would res­ult in the same (lower) roof heights of these 1¾ storey houses. The 1¾ storey houses built for The High­land Coun­cil are much closer to this pro­posed devel­op­ment – in fact the garden of Plot 31 adjoins the High­land Coun­cil devel­op­ment – thus build­ing these pro­posed houses to this exist­ing 1¾ storey design would fit better.

It is claimed in the Design State­ment that, ​“To ensure com­pli­ance with Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment ​‘bench­mark’ costs for build­ing afford­able homes, storey and a half or three quarter dwell­ings would be prob­lem­at­ic due to an unfa­vour­able ratio of con­struc­tion cost to valu­ation cost;”. As I stated in my objec­tion, no evid­ence has been presen­ted to sup­port this asser­tion. The cost of build­ing the 10 1¾ storey houses for The High­land Coun­cil under 2105/0394/DET must be avail­able by now — what evid­ence can The High­land Coun­cil pro­duce which demon­strates that these house build costs did not com­ply with Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment ​‘bench­mark’ costs? If the 10 off 1¾ storey houses com­pleted in late 2018 are accept­able as afford­able houses, then these pro­posed 13 houses should be built to that design. 

Turn­ing to the FFLs which have now been added to the sec­tion draw­ing for the 13 houses. I appre­ci­ate that some attempt has been made to lower the FFLs of some of the houses from the levels approved under 2016/0060/DET. How­ever, with what has tran­spired on this applic­a­tion to date (includ­ing ​‘mis­takes’), the con­tinu­al his­tory of enforce­ment prob­lems and the ad hoc design changes on the adja­cent private devel­op­ment, what con­fid­ence can I (and the Plan­ning Author­ity) have that, if this applic­a­tion is approved, the FFLs of the as built houses will not exceed that shown in the approved draw­ing? Giv­en the his­tory on this site, sign off by the developer’s con­sult­ant is not sat­is­fact­ory, instead an inde­pend­ent sign off must be required. 

Yours faith­fully,

Dr Gor­don Bulloch