CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 7 11/10/2019

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

DEVEL­OP­MENT PRO­POSED: Erec­tion of a dis­til­lery, vis­it­or centre, ware­house, car park­ing, road junc­tion and asso­ci­ated infra­struc­ture and land­scap­ing at Land 350M SE of Lower Gaich, Dul­nain Bridge

REF­ER­ENCE: 2019/0209/DET

APPLIC­ANT: Speymalt Whisky Dis­trib­ut­ors Ltd

DATE CALLED-IN: 8 July 2019

RECOM­MEND­A­TION: APPROVE sub­ject to con­di­tions and leg­al agreement

CASE OFFICERS: Kath­er­ine Don­nach­ie and Stephanie Wade (Plan­ning Officers)

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 7 11/10/2019

West­er Craggan

Π Ford N 450 CNPA Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Applic­a­tion Site 0 112.5 225 Meters 471 hna­han­net 29 38 River Dreg­gie M ON-SPEY Crag­gan Dul­nain Bridge Beinn Mhòr Glen­beg GRANT­OWALtd Ref­er­ence side Way C SP Spey­bridge Con­gash 2 A939 Lynemo Duinain Skye of Curr A95 Broom­hill Sta ‑320- rath 天 B970 Sgo Gaoith * 240- 60 6000-

Dis­mantled Rail­wa Wood Cemetery MS Kirk­ton 202 210 Inver­al­lan House 。 Upper Crag­gan Lower ADVEN­TURE ACTIV­IT­IES CH 木谷 天天 300- 木 280 ↑ $270 Gaich Wood 天天 本本本 250 W Croft Skellioch

-230

Upper Gaich Up 295 21.5回 Lower Gaich Crown copy­right and data­base rights 2019. Ord­nance Sur­vey Licence num­ber 100040965 2 200 AP Spey­side Crag­gan Sym­bol Stone Cross Slab C Fort 100 210 Crag­gan Golf Club Tar­rig Mhore 210. 00 200 QQ ৫৫ G 220 210 G 221

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 7 11/10/2019

SITE DESCRIP­TION, PRO­POS­AL AND HISTORY

Site Descrip­tion

1. The applic­a­tion site is loc­ated to the south west of Grant­own on Spey beside the A95 Grant­own to Aviemore trunk road. The main devel­op­ment site is around 1.8 km from the edge of Grant­own on Spey. The over­all applic­a­tion site also includes a pipeline to a pro­posed water abstrac­tion area. This infra­struc­ture will be closer to Grant­own, with the pipeline run­ning approx­im­ately 670 metres north east­wards from the main dis­til­lery site towards Crag­gan House.

2. The A95 road effect­ively sep­ar­ates the applic­a­tion site into two par­cels of land with the pro­posed dis­til­lery to be loc­ated on the south­ern sec­tion of the site and the water abstrac­tion infra­struc­ture loc­ated on the north­ern sec­tion of the site. These two por­tions are linked by the rout­ing of the pro­posed water pipeline run­ning through fields to the north of the A95. The site loc­a­tion is shown on the com­mit­tee plan above and the loc­a­tion plan provided with­in Appendix I- Plans.

3. The south­ern site is loc­ated imme­di­ately to the south of the well-estab­lished Crag­gan Out­doors recre­ation­al facil­ity includ­ing golf course, arch­ery course, ponds and café. It com­prises agri­cul­tur­al fields and slopes east­wards towards the River Spey and cov­ers an area of just over 10 hec­tares. This sits with­in a lar­ger area shown as being under the con­trol of the applic­ants as illus­trated in Appendix I – Plans. The River Spey is a des­ig­nated core path, and on the oth­er (east) side of the Spey is the Spey­side Way. There are exist­ing trees along the banks of the river Spey with­in the site. An exist­ing fisherman’s path runs along­side riverb­ank here lead­ing north­wards along the river­side and back to Grant­own via Inver­al­lan cemetery and on to the minor road lead­ing to the town. The River Spey is a Site of Spe­cial Sci­entif­ic Interest (SSSI) as well as a Spe­cial Area of Con­ser­va­tion des­ig­nated for its Atlantic sal­mon, fresh water pearl mus­sels, sea lamprey and otter interests.

4. To the south of this part of the site is agri­cul­tur­al land and Lower Gaich Farm com­plex which lies approx­im­ately 225 from the south­ern edge of the applic­a­tion site. The A95 trunk road forms the west­ern site bound­ary and on the oth­er (west) side of the A95 is more agri­cul­tur­al land and also the line of the former Aviemore to Grant­own rail­way line, with the remains of the old embank­ments clearly evid­ent. Upper Gaich Farm lies some 280 metres to the west on this side of the A95 with Gaich also loc­ated on this side of the road. There are a num­ber of farms and houses in the wider sur­round­ing area with Upper, Lower and Gaich being the nearest prop­er­ties to the site. This con­text is shown on the res­id­en­tial recept­ors plan included in Appendix I- Plans.

5. This south­ern site is undu­lat­ing graz­ing land and includes an exist­ing pond type area in the south west­ern part of the site which at the time of writ­ing is more a wet­land depres­sion. An elec­tri­city line crosses the site and it is pro­posed to under­ground this. The south east­ern part of the site closest to the Spey lies with­in an area of medi­um like­li­hood (0.5% annu­al prob­ab­il­ity or I in 200 year) flood extent of SEPA’s flood maps so may be at medi­um to high risk of flu­vi­al flood­ing from the River Spey.

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 7 11/10/2019

1. The second part of the applic­a­tion site is loc­ated on the west side of the A95 road and com­prises land required to provide the pipeline link from the water abstrac­tion point to the dis­til­lery itself. The pipeline route ini­tially runs through agri­cul­tur­al land between the A95 and the former rail­way, then heads north-west into the wooded policies of Crag­gan House where it is pro­posed to loc­ate the water abstrac­tion point. This area com­prises a mix­ture of garden/​landscaped land with ponds and wood­land. The Glen­beg burn runs through this part of the site and it is from here that it is pro­posed to abstract water for pro­cessing. The Glen­beg Burn is a trib­u­tary of the River Spey which is, as noted earli­er is an SAC and SSSI des­ig­nated NATURA site.

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=PU0J0FSI0CH00

Title	Draw­ing Num­ber	Date on Plan*	Date Received
Applic­a­tion Drawings
Site Loc­a­tion Plan (Doc­u­ment 6)	A10-06 – 01-dwg	29 April 2019	08 July 2019
	Rev.3
Site Applic­a­tion Area Plan (Doc­u­ment 7)	A10-07 – 09-01-	29 April 2019	08 July 2019
	dwg Rev.3
Site Mas­ter Plan (Draw­ing 8)	A10-08 – 01-dwg	29 April 2019	08 July 2019
	Rev.5
Site Lay­out Plan (Draw­ing 9)	A10-09 – 01-dwg	29 April 2019	08 July 2019
	Rev.3
Road Junc­tion & Site Access	TCXX(90)4001	25 April 2019	08 July 2019
Lay­out Plan (Doc­u­ment 10)
Site Infra­struc­ture Plan	CLXX(90)4001	16 May 2019	08 July 2019
(Doc­u­ment 11)	Rev.P03
Ground Floor Dis­til­lery Plan	A20-00 – 00.rvt	24 May 2019	08 July 2019
(Doc­u­ment 13)	Rev.3
Mezzanine/​First Floor Distillery	A20-01 – 00.rvt	24 May 2019	08 July 2019
Plan (Doc­u­ment 14)	Rev.3
Second Floor/​Part Roof	A20-02 – 00.rvt	24 May 2019	08 July 2019
Dis­til­lery Plan (Doc­u­ment 15)	Rev.3
Dis­til­lery Roof Plan (Doc­u­ment	A20-05 – 00.rvt	24 May 2019	08 July 2019
16)	Rev.3
Ware­house Plan & Section	A20-10 – 01-dwg	03 May 2019	08 July 2019
(Doc­u­ment 17)	Rev. I
Dis­til­lery Elev­a­tions Plan	A30-01 – 01.rvt	24 May 2019	08 July 2019
(Doc­u­ment 18)	Rev.3
Ware­house Elev­a­tions Plan	A30-02 – 01.rvt	18 July 2019	30 July 2019
(Doc­u­ment 19)	Rev.3
Pump House Elev­a­tions Plan	A70-01 – 01.rvt	18 July 2019	30 July 2019
(Doc­u­ment 20)	Rev.2
Site Cross Sec­tions Plan	A32-01 – 01.rvt	17 July 2019	30 July 2019

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 7 11/10/2019

Title	Draw­ing Num­ber	Date on Plan*	Date Received
(Doc­u­ment 21)
Over­head Rendered Image A	Rev.5		08 July 2019
(Doc­u­ment 22)
Over­head Rendered Image B			08 July 2019
(Doc­u­ment 23)
Site Visu­al­isa­tion A (Doc­u­ment			08 July 2019
24)
Site Visu­al­isa­tion B (Doc­u­ment			08 July 2019
25)
Site Visu­al­isa­tion C (Doc­u­ment			08 July 2019
26)
Land­scape Lay­out Plan	L01 Rev.G	16 May 2019	08 July 2019
(Doc­u­ment 27)
Plant­ing Plan (Doc­u­ment 28)	L02	14 May 2019	08 July 2019
Envir­on­ment­al Impact Assess­ment documents
EIAR Non-Tech­nic­al Summary			08 July 2019
(Doc­u­ment 29)
EIAR Volume I Chapters			08 July 2019
(Doc­u­ment 30)
EIAR Volume 2 Figures			08 July 2019
(Doc­u­ment 31)
EIAR Volume 3 Appendices			08 July 2019
(Doc­u­ment 32)
EIAR Volume 4 Confidential			08 July 2019
Appendix (Doc­u­ment 33)
Applic­a­tion Sup­port­ing Information
Plan­ning State­ment (Doc­u­ment 3)		01 June 2019	08 July 2019
Design and Access Statement		01 June 2019	08 July 2019
(Doc­u­ment 4)
Pre-applic­a­tion Consultation		01 June 2019	08 July 2019
Report (Doc­u­ment 5)
Eco­nom­ic State­ment (Doc­u­ment		01 June 2019	08 July 2019
34)
Con­struc­tion Meth­od Statement		01 May 2019	08 July 2019
(Doc­u­ment 35)
Waste Strategy (Doc­u­ment 36)		01 June 2019	08 July 2019
Sup­port­ing state­ment of		24 July 2019	24 July 2019
cla­ri­fic­a­tion from agent
Ped­es­tri­an Path Plan		29 July 2019	29 July 2019
Cla­ri­fic­a­tion from agent re		9 August 2019	9 August
foot­path link			2019
Addendum EIAR Non-technical		29 July 2019	29 July
sum­mary para 13.3			20193
Dimen­sioned site plan/​parking	A10-09 – 20	6 Sept 2019	10 Sept 2019
area

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 7 11/10/2019

Title	Draw­ing Num­ber	Date on Plan*	Date Received
Response on mat­ters raised by trans­port plan­ning consultation		Doc­u­ment by Ness Planning	10 Sept 2019
Pro­posed Access Junc­tion Lay­out with vis­ib­il­ity splay	TCXX(90)5006		27/09/19

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

1. The applic­ants are estab­lished whisky sup­pli­ers and own an exist­ing dis­til­lery at Ben­romach, Forres. They wish to grow and expand their busi­ness by devel­op­ing a state of the art whisky dis­til­lery and vis­it­or centre at the start of the Spey­side Whisky Trail. It is anti­cip­ated that pro­duc­tion will be 375,000 litres of spir­it per year, increas­ing over time to the max­im­um pro­duc­tion capa­city of 2 mil­lion litres of spir­it per year. The dis­til­lery and vis­it­or centre has been sized to accom­mod­ate up to 50,000 vis­it­ors per year with no coach parties per­mit­ted. The sup­port­ing inform­a­tion sets out that the choice of site was gov­erned by a num­ber of factors includ­ing avail­ab­il­ity of qual­ity raw mater­i­als, land size, trans­port links, cli­mate, land­scape, access to water sup­plies and vis­ib­il­ity and attract­ive­ness to visitors.

2. The pro­posed devel­op­ment com­prises a num­ber of com­pon­ents includ­ing dis­til­lery, café, vis­it­or centre, vis­it­or ware­house, ware­house and asso­ci­ated infrastructure.

3. It is pro­posed to site the new dis­til­lery com­plex itself about halfway down the fields lying to the east of the A95 as shown on the pro­posed site and land­scape plans con­tained in Appendix I –Plans. This loc­a­tion will be above the above the 200 metre flood level and will also enable the exist­ing river­side trees to be retained.

4. The dis­til­lery com­plex has been designed as a con­tem­por­ary cluster of build­ings with key com­pon­ents designed in a cir­cu­lar form wrap­ping around the ser­vi­cing area so avoid­ing any rear elev­a­tion and screen­ing the ser­vice yard. The pro­cessing and ser­vi­cing areas are part of this design concept with the pro­cess build­ings and boil­er house con­tained with­in this cir­cu­lar shape. This dis­til­lery com­plex will include the mash tuns; still house: water and efflu­ent tanks; draff and malt silos; plant, and boil­er and gen­er­at­or equip­ment. A small cir­cu­lar tast­ing room is also pro­posed. Plans of the lay­out are attached in Appendix I – Plans. The highest point of the build­ing will be the boil­er stack at around 16.8 metres high. Oth­er­wise the dis­til­lery com­plex will have an over­all height of 13.5 metres with the pro­posed vents on the south sec­tion of the build­ing increas­ing this height to 14.6 metres. The build­ing is set out over three levels accom­mod­at­ing lower and upper level tun, still and mash rooms. Space has been assigned in the design for future expan­sion. An under­ground vis­it­or ware­house facil­ity is pro­posed to the south east of this com­plex accessed from the main build­ing. This build­ing is formed in a semi-cir­cu­lar shape and con­struc­ted with sedum roof and stone faced wall facing towards the dis­til­lery building.

5. Vis­it­or facil­it­ies com­pris­ing café, meet­ing room and retail area are pro­posed with­in a ​“drum” shaped build­ing attached to the north east­ern part of this cir­cu­lar dis­til­lery com­plex and com­mand­ing views towards the River Spey. This part of the devel­op­ment will also include the recep­tion area and staff facil­it­ies. It extends over

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 7 11/10/2019

three floors and is around 11 metres high at the highest point. Recep­tion, shop, office and café facil­it­ies are pro­posed at ground floor level, with meeting/​conference room and office facil­it­ies on the second floor, and fur­ther tast­ing room and din­ing facil­it­ies at third floor level with ter­race. A water fea­ture is pro­posed in front of this part of the building.

1. As noted above this cir­cu­lar shape is designed to avoid there being any ​“back” to the build­ing and to max­im­ise views to the Spey with the Design State­ment explain­ing that the vis­ib­il­ity of the site from the sur­round­ing land­scape informed this design approach, as this meant that every elev­a­tion was equally import­ant with the design solu­tion reflect­ing the approach that the roof would be seen as a ​“fifth” elev­a­tion. It is also designed to include func­tion­al oper­a­tions and ser­vice areas for deliv­ery vehicles in a way that ensures these oper­a­tion­al areas are part of the main build­ing yet screened from view. The applic­ants’ design state­ment explains that the design strategy seeks to integ­rate the vis­it­or route into the design without com­prom­ising the whisky mak­ing pro­cess and allow­ing vis­it­ors to see into areas often little such as the lower still house, tun house and mash house.

2. Pro­posed fin­ishes are a mix­ture of con­tem­por­ary and tra­di­tion­al mater­i­als includ­ing sedum roof on the vis­it­or ware­house and part of the main cir­cu­lar com­plex. The roof of the vis­it­or ​“drum” type build­ing will be fin­ished in a grey mem­brane as will part of the main dis­til­lery com­plex. Nat­ur­al ash­lar stone is pro­posed on vis­it­or centre ​“drum” walls and on the lower sec­tions of the dis­til­lery build­ing, togeth­er with tim­ber and met­al clad­ding upper walls with graph­ite grey fin­ish. Extens­ive areas of glaz­ing are also included. This is illus­trated in the plans and visu­al­isa­tions con­tained with­in Appendix 1.

3. A bon­ded ware­house for cask stor­age is also pro­posed which will be sited to the west of the dis­til­lery. This is of curved roof design with the end walls act­ing as retain­ing walls to banked up earth. The pro­posed height is some 6 metres and the roof will be fin­ished in sedum to allow it to be part of the adja­cent land­scape. The side walls will be clad in pro­filed met­al to match the dis­til­lery and to meet func­tion­al require­ments of a bon­ded warehouse.

4. Men­tion is made in the plan­ning state­ment of poten­tial for a fur­ther ware­house and the poten­tial for tour­ist based hol­i­day lodges, but this does not form part of the applic­a­tion with any future pro­pos­als con­sidered on their own plan­ning merits.

5. Land­scap­ing is pro­posed around the new build­ings as shown on the land­scape scheme includ­ing aspen-rich wood­land on north side of site, wild­flower mead­ow on south, plant­ing along­side the access road into the site, and through­out the site togeth­er with reten­tion of ripari­an plant­ing beside the river Spey. A net­work of paths through the site is pro­posed to segreg­ate vehicu­lar and ped­es­tri­an traffic, with links at either side of the site pro­posed into Crag­gan Out­doors to the north and south towards Gaich.

6. A new site access will be formed onto the A95 trunk road on the site front­age to this road in the north­ern­most part of this site. This positon has been designed with the future pro­pos­als for the exten­sion of the Strath­spey Rail­way to Grant­own and its need to cross the A95 in mind. The applic­a­tion site access will split in two after the ini­tial junc­tion to keep vis­it­or and oper­a­tion­al traffic sep­ar­ate. The intern­al site roads

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 7 11/10/2019

are to be single car­riage­way 3.3 metres wide with passing places. Vis­it­or and staff park­ing com­pris­ing 40 vis­it­or spaces (includ­ing 3 access­ible spaces) and 10 staff park­ing spaces is pro­posed to the north west of the dis­til­lery build­ing between it and the vis­it­or ware­house. The park­ing has been designed in a cir­cu­lar shape to reflect the over­all design. Cyc­list and motor bike park­ing and elec­tric char­ging point facil­it­ies are also included.

1. Oth­er key infra­struc­ture is the pro­posed water abstrac­tion from the Glen­beg burn to provide the pro­cessing water for the dis­til­lery. This will be abstrac­ted from the Glen­beg Burn down­stream of the private water sup­ply at Crag­gan House. The final abstrac­tion point has yet to be final­ised, but is likely to be north of the A95 and south of West­er Crag­gan. The water will be con­veyed to the site by the pro­posed new pipeline over a dis­tance of around 670 metres. At times of low flow abstrac­tion will be sup­ple­men­ted by water abstrac­tion from two new bore­holes to be loc­ated at the south­ern point of the site to the east of the vis­it­or warehouse.

2. Infra­struc­ture is also pro­posed for the abstrac­tion of water from the River Spey for cool­ing pur­poses and then sub­sequent dis­charge back into the river. This will take the form of two pipes with the abstrac­tion pipe lead­ing to a pump house into the dis­til­lery where it will be used once and then returned to the Spey upstream of the abstrac­tion point whereby there will be no impact on water flows. As the water return­ing to the Spey will be at a slightly high­er tem­per­at­ure mod­el­ling work was car­ried out to assess impacts on the river, con­clud­ing that there were low impacts. These dis­charges and abstrac­tions will be con­trolled through SEPA’s licens­ing CAR régime. The pro­posed pump house is of simple lean –to tim­ber design.

3. It is pro­posed to con­nect to the pub­lic water sup­ply with foul drain­age from the vis­it­or and staff facil­it­ies to be treated by a treat­ment plant, loc­ated close to the pro­posed pump house in the south east­ern part of the site, with dis­charge via pipe to the Spey. The only indus­tri­al foul drain­age will be from spent lees from pro­cessing which will be treated in this plant too with con­cen­trated sludge removed off site for dis­pos­al. The treat­ment plant will be mod­u­lar in nature. Oth­er dis­til­lery pro­cessing efflu­ent (pot ale, draff and wash­ing waters) will be removed off site for treat­ment and dis­pos­al. It is under­stood that pot ale syr­up and draff by products from dis­tilling pro­cess will be sup­plied to the loc­al agri­cul­tur­al sector.

4. Sur­face water will be treated by means of a SUDS sys­tem. This will include road­side swale, per­meable pav­ing to car park­ing areas, green roofs on build­ings which offer source con­trol, with the remain­ing small por­tion of roofs to be con­nec­ted to the drain­age sys­tem and so to a pro­posed orna­ment­al pond to enhance aer­a­tion and health of the pond before being con­veyed to the infilt­ra­tion basin which is loc­ated to the east of the build­ings as shown on the site plan. A main­ten­ance sched­ule is included.

5. In terms of energy, the dis­til­lery will use LPG fired boil­ers and the approach will be to try and reduce energy use in the first place through effi­ciency measures.

6. It is pro­posed to oper­ate the vis­it­or centre/​café 7 days a week and the dis­til­lery 5 days a week over week­end days to coin­cide with vis­it­or demand. As pro­duc­tion increases, oper­a­tions may increase to 7 days per week with front and back shifts.

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 7 11/10/2019

1. The applic­a­tion is a ​“major applic­a­tion” as defined in the Scot­tish Government’s hier­archy of devel­op­ment and is also an Envir­on­ment­al Impact Assess­ment (EIA) devel­op­ment under the terms of the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning (Envir­on­ment­al Impact Assessment)(Scotland) Reg­u­la­tions 2017. Con­sequently the applic­a­tion is sup­por­ted by an Envir­on­ment­al Impact Assess­ment of the pro­posed devel­op­ment which seeks to identi­fy, pre­dict and eval­u­ate likely envir­on­ment­al effects, with mit­ig­a­tion set out as neces­sary. This includes an assess­ment of the devel­op­ment when com­bined with oth­er devel­op­ments to con­sider cumu­lat­ive impacts.

2. Key areas con­sidered in the EIA pro­cess were:

a) Hydro­logy, hydro­geo­logy and geo­logy — in terms of effects to sur­face ground water rocks and soils.

b) Land­scape and visu­al — The land­scape and visu­al assess­ment (LVIA) set out to identi­fy pre­dicted land­scape and visu­al effects res­ult­ing from the con­struc­tion and oper­a­tion of the pro­posed devel­op­ment. It includes pho­tomont­ages to show the pro­posed devel­op­ment from vari­ous pub­licly access­ible view­points at (1) post con­struc­tion and (2) 10 years post con­struc­tion stage in order to try and illus­trate how the build­ing will appear in the land­scape in the future once tree plant­ing becomes estab­lished. An assess­ment of the impacts upon the Spe­cial Land­scape Qual­it­ies of the Nation­al Park was also included.

The LVIA con­cluded that land­scape effects would primar­ily be con­cen­trated with­in an approx­im­ate 500 metre radi­us of the site with sig­ni­fic­ant effects loc­al­ised. Sim­il­arly it con­cluded that sig­ni­fic­ant effects on the spe­cial land­scape qual­it­ies of the Nation­al Park would be at a very loc­al level with visu­al effects restric­ted to a rel­at­ively small num­ber of recept­ors. These would be mit­ig­ated by pro­posed land­scape and eco­lo­gic­al mit­ig­a­tion works.

The pro­posed land­scape and eco­lo­gic­al mit­ig­a­tion and enhance­ment works include reten­tion of tree cov­er with­in the site (includ­ing ripari­an plant­ing along­side the River Spey); new areas of aspen plant­ing in the north east­ern parts of the site and along­side the Spey: new par­cels of wood­land in north west­ern part of site to facil­it­ate glimpsed views from the A95; scattered park­land and aven­ue style plant­ing with­in the cent­ral part of the site sug­gest­ive of the his­tor­ic designed land­scape at Castle Grant; enhance­ment of exist­ing wet­land hab­it­at in south­ern part of the site for wad­ing birds includ­ing spe­cies rich mar­gin­al wet­land; spe­cies rich wild­flower mead­ow around peri­pher­al areas of site; and cre­ation of net­work of paths with­in the site to link to wider net­work such as the fisherman’s path by river­side. It is also noted that where pos­sible advance plant­ing will be car­ried out. The sub­mit­ted land­scape mas­ter­plan illus­trates these pro­pos­als and is included in Appendix I – Plans.

c) Noise and vibra­tion — baseline noise stud­ies were car­ried out and impacts on noise sens­it­ive recept­ors con­sidered in rela­tion to oper­a­tion­al, con­struc­tion and road noise. No sig­ni­fic­ant effects were iden­ti­fied so no spe­cif­ic mit­ig­a­tion is pro­posed oth­er than best prac­tise dur­ing construction.

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 7 11/10/2019

d) Air qual­ity, dust and odour — no sig­ni­fic­ant air qual­ity or odour issues were iden­ti­fied at the oper­a­tion­al stage and it was con­cluded that dust impacts at the con­struc­tion stage could be con­trolled by good prac­tise and mit­ig­a­tion as developed by a Con­struc­tion Envir­on­ment Man­age­ment Plan (CEMP).

e) Eco­logy and nature con­ser­va­tion — this sec­tion assessed the impacts on the nat­ur­al envir­on­ment and set out mit­ig­a­tion meas­ures. A suite of eco­lo­gic­al stud­ies were under­taken includ­ing sur­veys for bats, aspen brack­et fungi, pro­tec­ted mam­mals, breed­ing birds, amphi­bi­ans, fresh­wa­ter pearl mus­sels and fish hab­it­ats. Bat roost­ing poten­tial was found in mature alder trees by the river­side. There are no plans to fell or lop these. It was con­cluded that the pro­posed devel­op­ment was unlikely to have any likely sig­ni­fic­ant adverse effects for des­ig­nated sites. The only likely sig­ni­fic­ant effects were iden­ti­fied to be for wad­ing birds with mit­ig­a­tion recom­men­ded by way of pre­par­a­tion of detailed breed­ing bird pro­tec­tion plan with tar­geted mit­ig­a­tion pro­posed such as cre­ation of more wader chick hab­it­at. Biod­iversity enhance­ment meas­ures have been iden­ti­fied as fol­lows — aspen expan­sion; goldeneye nest boxes added to ripari­an alders: res­tor­a­tion and per­man­ent rewet­ting of pond: cre­ation of new pond; and remov­al of Amer­ic­an skunk cab­bage along stream/​ditch in north of study area. All these meas­ures are detailed in an out­line hab­it­at man­age­ment plan.

f) Archae­ology and cul­tur­al her­it­age — con­cluded that a watch­ing brief should be under­taken in areas of the site where his­tor­ic map­ping indic­ated there may be some interest with archae­olo­gic­al tri­al trench­ing recom­men­ded before devel­op­ment starts.

g) Socio-eco­nom­ics, tour­ism and recre­ation — this chapter out­lines the poten­tial effects and bene­fits, set­ting out that the import­ance of the whisky industry to Scotland’s eco­nomy, not­ing that 20% of vis­it­ors to Scot­land vis­it a dis­til­lery. The desire to employ loc­al con­tract­ors is set out. Minor effects on the fisherman’s path are pre­dicted dur­ing con­struc­tion. It is con­cluded that the devel­op­ment will help deliv­er the Cairngorms Nation­al Park Eco­nom­ic Strategy.

h) Trans­port and access — assessed the impact on the trans­port net­work. In rela­tion to vis­it­or and employ­ee trips it fore­cast that the greatest num­ber of trips will be gen­er­ated on Sat­urdays and this is likely to res­ult in a max­im­um increase of 4.2% increase in traffic flows on the A95 in the vicin­ity of the site which is con­sidered to be min­im­al. No coach parties are to be per­mit­ted. In terms of dis­til­lery HGV ser­vi­cing trips it is anti­cip­ated that there will be around 3 pot ale pickups and I yeast deliv­ery per week, and 2 malt deliv­er­ies and 2 – 3 van deliv­er­ies per month; plus I load of casks out per month. It is sub­mit­ted that suit­able access can be formed onto the trunk road. Ped­es­tri­an access to the site was also con­sidered and the assess­ment high­lights that the applic­ant intends to sup­port deliv­ery of a shared use pedestrian/​cycle facil­ity to link Dul­nain Bridge to Grant­own. Fur­ther cla­ri­fic­a­tion on path links was provided by the agent who iden­ti­fied that links can be made to exist­ing paths with­in the Crag­gan Out­doors com­plex and to the exist­ing fisherman’s path which runs along­side the River Spey from the bot­tom of the site which can provide access back to Grant­own on Spey. The link to Crag­gan Out­doors is sug­ges­ted in order to dis­cour­age cyc­lists from access­ing the site via the new access junc­tion. A link is also pro­posed to be

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 7 11/10/2019

formed west­wards with­in the site to poten­tially link to any future com­munity path from Dul­nain Bridge to Grant­own. The Trans­port Assess­ment also out­lines that there are cycle links from Grant­own although at present this would involve trav­el­ling on the A95 for a short dis­tance. A plan show­ing these vari­ous links is included in Appendix I. It is also high­lighted that the loc­al bus oper­at­or will stop on request in this rur­al area which could facil­it­ate non-motor­ised access to the site. It is also pro­posed to devel­op a travel plan to encour­age staff and employ­ees to use non-motor­ised travel a draft has been provided.

1. As this is a ​“major” plan­ning applic­a­tion under the terms of the Scot­tish Government’s hier­archy of devel­op­ment, stat­utory pre-applic­a­tion con­sulta­tion with the com­munity is required. This has been car­ried out and a pre-applic­a­tion con­sulta­tion report provided which sets out that over 150 people atten­ded a pub­lic meet­ing in Feb­ru­ary 2019, and explains how feed­back from the pub­lic was addressed in the emer­ging sub­mis­sion. The report out­lines that 105 of the attendees agreed that the dis­til­lery would be bene­fi­cial to the loc­al area.

2. Oth­er sup­port­ing mater­i­al includes:

a) Plan­ning State­ment: This seeks to set out how the devel­op­ment com­plies with plan­ning policies and to explain the plan­ning rationale for the development.

b) Eco­nom­ic Bene­fit State­ment: This sets out that at the pre-plan­ning stage in excess of ten loc­ally and nation­ally based firms have been employed in pre­par­ing the applic­a­tion. At the con­struc­tion and com­mis­sion stage it is anti­cip­ated that between 50 – 100 people will be employed on site with some using loc­al accom­mod­a­tion and amen­it­ies. Equip­ment and build­ing mater­i­als will be sourced loc­ally where pos­sible. At the oper­a­tion­al stage it is anti­cip­ated there will be 3 per­man­ent jobs in the dis­til­lery and 3 in the retail/​vis­it­or centre part. At peak vis­it­or times this num­ber will increase by 4, so the total num­ber of jobs will be between 6 and 10. Accord­ing to the Envir­on­ment­al Impact Assess­ment Report this could increase to 20 full time equi­val­ents if and when fur­ther shifts are intro­duced. Fur­ther employ­ment is expec­ted in the café out­let which will be fran­chised out to a loc­ally based operator.

Accord­ing to Scot­tish Whisky Asso­ci­ation inform­a­tion, every dis­til­lery job sup­ports 3.5 oth­er jobs in sup­port ser­vices, so provid­ing fur­ther employ­ment bene­fits. For example, sup­plies to both café and to the dis­til­lery itself in terms of raw mater­i­als, main­ten­ance etc. It is also anti­cip­ated that the vis­it­ors attrac­ted to the dis­til­lery will also improve vis­it­or num­bers to Grant­own to use loc­al amen­it­ies as well as inter­na­tion­al guests look­ing for accom­mod­a­tion. The foot­path links to Crag­gan Out­doors also means that both busi­nesses may bene­fit. Finally there will be eco­nom­ic bene­fits from rates and also the poten­tial to expand the Spey­side Whisky Fest­iv­al to the site.

c) Con­struc­tion meth­od state­ment — which explains that all excav­ated earth will be retained on site and used in land­scap­ing works.

d) Drain­age Impact assessment

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CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Item 7 11/10/2019

e) Waste strategy — explain­ing how waste from both the vis­it­or centre oper­a­tions and the dis­tilling by products will be managed.

f) Con­fid­en­tial appendix on fresh water pearl mus­sels — to help inform the loc­a­tions for intake and out­flow pipes.

g) Visu­al­isa­tions.

His­tory

1. Pre-applic­a­tion advice was provided through the High­land Coun­cil major applic­a­tions pre-applic­a­tion ser­vice and the CNPA provided input to this pro­cess with a detailed response issued by the High­land Coun­cil in June 2018. This response set out the scope and extent of inform­a­tion which would be required in sup­port of a plan­ning applic­a­tion and iden­ti­fied those mat­ters which should be addressed before sub­mis­sion of an applic­a­tion. (High­land Coun­cil ref: 18/02012/PREAPP).

2. A screen­ing request was also sub­mit­ted to the High­land Coun­cil in June 2018 to estab­lish if Envir­on­ment­al Impact Assess­ment would be required under the terms of the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning (Envir­on­ment­al Impact Assess­ment) (Scot­land) Reg­u­la­tions 2017. It was con­cluded that EIA would be required. (High­land Coun­cil ref: 18/02599/SCR).

3. Fur­ther to this a scop­ing request was sub­mit­ted to the High­land Coun­cil in Octo­ber 2018 seek­ing advice on the scope of the mat­ters to be addressed with any EIA sub­mis­sion. The CNPA input to this pro­cess (High­land Coun­cil ref: 18/0487/SCOP).

4. Early in 2019 CNPA took steps to bring togeth­er the key people asso­ci­ated with the four pro­posed devel­op­ments between Grant­own and Dul­nain Bridge includ­ing the dis­til­lery, the exten­sion of the steam rail­way, the upgrad­ing of the A95 Trunk Road and the pro­posed multi-use path between Grant­own and Dul­nain Bridge. Inform­a­tion was shared and inform­al dis­cus­sions took place that were advant­age­ous to each of the projects.

DEVEL­OP­MENT PLAN CONTEXT

Nation­al Policy

1. Scot­tish Plan­ning Policy (SPP, Revised 2014) sets out nation­al plan­ning policies that reflect Scot­tish Min­is­ters pri­or­it­ies for the oper­a­tion of the plan­ning sys­tem and for the devel­op­ment and use of land. Under plan­ning law, plan­ning applic­a­tions must be determ­ined in accord­ance with the devel­op­ment plan unless mater­i­al con­sid­er­a­tions indic­ate oth­er­wise. The con­tent of the SPP is a mater­i­al con­sid­er­a­tion in plan­ning decisions that car­ries sig­ni­fic­ant weight. The SPP pro­motes con­sist­ency in the applic­a­tion of policy across Scot­land while allow­ing suf­fi­cient flex­ib­il­ity to reflect loc­al circumstances.

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