Item7Appendix2AObjections20200293DETBridgeOfGairn_Redacted

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 7 Appendix 2A 26/03/2021

AGENDA ITEM 7

APPENDIX 2A

2020/0293/DET

REP­RES­ENT­A­TIONS OBJECTIONS

Com­ment on the Pro­pos­al : Erec­tion of 3 Dwell­ing Houses and Detached Gar­ages : Bridge of Gairn, Bal­later AB35 5UA

Ref: ²⁰²⁰⁄₀₂₉₃ Date 4^th Decem­ber 2020 Our Ref: planapp021220

The fol­low­ing provides ini­tial con­sid­er­a­tions relat­ing to the plan­ning application.

1. Foul Drain­age The Plan­ning Applic­a­tion does not identi­fy that the site is in effect a pen­in­su­lar sur­roun­ded on three sides by steep down slop­ing banks, which ini­ti­ates the fol­low­ing comment.

While we accept the drain­age report by S A McGregor, we have severe reser­va­tions about the place­ment of the foul treat­ments plants and soakaways. The land is quite good for soak-away as noted in the report but the height of the level ground above our prop­erty is very con­cern­ing in the long term.

For example the drop in the levels of ground from the sur­face of Plot 1 to our prop­erty is approx­im­ately 5m and that drop is dir­ectly off the edge of Plot 1, which is not shown on the cross sec­tions of the site par­tic­u­larly at B‑B. That soak-away is dir­ectly in the gap between our house and the gar­age, which is actu­ally con­struc­ted into the high bank. The poros­ity of the ground is likely to be fine over a peri­od of 10 – 15 years. Exper­i­ence is that even­tu­al leak­age inev­it­ably takes its most con­veni­ent route. There­fore, the pro­posed site of the soak-away is likely to be an envir­on­ment­al haz­ard with­in a peri­od of time most espe­cially as our house is at the low­est point.

It is observed that the West side of the plots offers a pleth­ora of soak-aways all to a great­er or less­er degree at the top of, and adja­cent to, our steep adjoin­ing bank.

One solu­tion that we would pro­pose is that the foul treat­ment plant and soak-away of Plot 1 is moved to the South East corner of the site as shown in the attached Plan 1 – 1. Sim­il­arly, repos­i­tion­ing of foul drain­age on Plots2 & 3 is requested.

Altern­at­ively, we ask wheth­er the 3 house devel­op­ment would best be served by one foul treat­ment and soak-away at the South East corner of Plot 1 which will ameli­or­ate the prob­lem of con­struct­ing the soak ‑aways above our house with the inev­it­able risk of con­tam­in­at­ing our prop­erty. See Plan 1.

This type of shared foul treat­ment plant is a com­mon solu­tion to such a prob­lem and the shared respons­ib­il­ity is writ­ten into the indi­vidu­al house deeds.

1. Loss of pri­vacy We are unhappy with the loss of pri­vacy to our house by the house to be con­struc­ted on Plot 1. The pro­posed ori­ent­a­tion will per­mit a dir­ect line of sight into our main bed­room win­dow from the bed­room win­dows of the pro­posed house (4.5m High).

We ask the plan­ning officer to seek a slight change to the ori­ent­a­tion of the house on Plot 1 so that the front elev­a­tion faces South West and not West. This slight change of ori­ent­a­tion will

sub­stan­tially neg­ate the dir­ect line of sight issue. Please find attached a draw­ing (Plan 1) indic­at­ing the slight change.

1. Design State­ment At a more trivi­al level the Design State­ment : 2.0 Loc­al Con­tent : Page 2 fea­tures a pic­ture entitled ​‘Gairn­bank Cot­tage’ which is in fact ​‘North Bal­gairn Stead­ing’ taken at the drive entrance from the A93.

2. Walls of the Houses The design state­ment states that tra­di­tion­al white dash ren­der­ing is to be used on the walls. This is in stark con­trast to every oth­er build­ing in the group­ing which are gran­ite. White dash will con­trast sharply with grey gran­ite in all sur­round­ing build­ings. It seems a great shame not to con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of gran­ite con­struc­tion — if a con­ces­sion is eco­nom­ic­ally essen­tial then per­haps some lim­ited gran­ite con­struc­tion could be incorporated.

At the least the developer could be required to use a col­our which is more con­sist­ent with the col­our of grey/​pink granite.

1. Gen­er­al Com­ment Pos­sibly exclud­ing the incor­por­a­tion of gran­ite, the con­cerns high­lighted can be read­ily accom­mod­ated without sig­ni­fic­antly increased costs to the developer.

John A.Taylor

North Bal­gairn Stead­ing Bridge of Gairn Bal­later Aber­deen­shire AB35 5UA

PLAN 1 Re-Ori­ent­a­tion of House & Repos­i­tion of Foul Drain­age Plant

Plot 1

Turn West Elev­a­tion to South West Treat­ment Plant for All 3 Houses

Pos­i­tion of Main Bed­room on Neigh­bour­ing House

From: Mur­ray Fer­guson Sent: Fri, 18 Dec 2020 09:08:10 +0000 To:Planning Cc:Emma Bryce Subject:FW: Devel­op­ment at Bridge of Gairn | 2020/0293/DET | Objec­tion Dear Stephanie

Devel­op­ment at Bridge of Gairn | 2020/0293/DET

Land To West Of Gairncliffe Bridge Of Gairn Bal­later Aber­deen­shire AB35 5UA

Erec­tion of 3 Dwell­ing­houses and Detached Garages

As the own­ers of Gairncliffe Cot­tage, we are writ­ing to express our deep­est con­cerns and objec­tions to the pro­pos­al to build 3 houses in the agri­cul­tur­al field adjoin­ing our property.

As a bit of back­ground, this cot­tage was sold to us by the Inver­cauld estate 4 years ago with no men­tion or doc­u­ment­a­tion of what the estate now tell us was an idea 7 years in the pipeline, to devel­op the land to build houses, dir­ectly in our line of view. Even watch­ing as we applied for plan­ning and built a mainly glass exten­sion to max­im­ize those views.

Our cot­tage has been very suc­cess­fully let as an Airb­nb ( please view Gairncliffe Cot­tage Airb­nb video on you tube which will show the views and adjoin­ing land) for the past 2 ¹⁄₂ years after we spent con­sid­er­able funds renov­at­ing it to the highest stand­ard and we have wel­comed guests from all over the world to enjoy Deeside and the Cairngorm Nation­al Park for the first time with many now return­ing hav­ing loved what they exper­i­enced. The over­whelm­ing feed­back is about the peace, views and tran­quil­ity in this unique setting.

You­tube Gairncliffe https://​www​.you​tube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=OPCY — dAHDo

AirB­nb Gairncliffe https://​www​.airb​nb​.co​.uk/​r​o​o​m​s​/​2​5​9​40981

All that is not just dimin­ished, but com­pletely bull­dozed by the pro­spect of, what is essen­tially a hous­ing estate being built slap in front of the liv­ing quar­ters of Gairncliffe, com­pletely at odds with everything we believed the Nation­al Park stood for.

We would stand to lose our pri­vacy, our views, sub­stan­tial income both dur­ing the build­ing pro­cess and then after­wards when all that our cottage’s main selling points have been so badly dimin­ished. The road access­ing the houses is being pro­posed to pass right in front of our patio and hot tub area where guests have enjoyed unin­ter­rup­ted views of Lochnagar.The pro­posed 2 storey house is dir­ectly in front of our liv­ing kit­chen area block­ing all even­ing light and would looks dir­ectly into our cottage.

If this pro­pos­al were to be passed in any shape or form, our house would plum­met in value, it is un-sellable as it stands as nobody would buy a prop­erty with that plan­ning pro­pos­al hanging over it. We approached the estate with a fair offer to pur­chase the field should plan­ning be passed in order to put ourselves in con­trol of any future devel­op­ment (one house at the far end of the field) as they claimed that they had had assur­ances from the plan­ning depart­ment that the devel­op­ment would be looked on favour­ably and so we feared that our only influ­ence might be on the pos­i­tion­ing of maybe one of the houses, but for us that is of no con­sequence . The estate rejec­ted that offer and we are urging you to reject this or any altern­at­ive pro­pos­al which would jeop­ard­ize this beau­ti­ful spot both for us and our pay­ing visitors.

Also, the addi­tion­al pro­pos­al to demol­ish the former bothy attached to Gairncliffe and build a size­able house and double gar­age on that as a sep­ar­ate cur­til­age is unac­cept­able. The bothy should have been pack­aged as part of the sale of Gairncliffe and our under­stand­ing of it is that it has only ever been used as a store / work­shop for Gairncliffe, nev­er hav­ing been inten­ded as fit for hab­it­a­tion. It needs to be retained as is and rein­stated as a garden store / work­shop, not demol­ished and developed on. It is a totally charm­ing piece of Deeside his­tory that forms part of the Gairncliffe court­yard and needs to be respec­ted as such.

Yours faith­fully

Steve & Suz­anne Gardiner

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