Item7Appendix2SupportingStatement20190289DET

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 7 Appendix 2 15/11/2019

AGENDA ITEM 7

APPENDIX 2

2019/0289/DET

SUP­PORT­ING STATEMENT

1504 ARCHI­TEc­tur­al & BUILD­ING CON­SULTANCY Bish­ops Well Cot­tage Dal­guise Dunkeld Perth­shire PH8 0JX

SUP­PORT­ING STATEMENT

Cli­ent — Mr F Laing

Site Address — Glen­beg Estate, Grandtown On Spey, Moray, PH26 3NT Farm Code — ⁵⁸⁶⁄₀₁₆₉

Pro­ject – Upgrade of exist­ing private ways for forestry & agri­cul­ture (In retrospect)

Back­ground

Glen­beg estate extends to approx­im­ately 4,000 acres (1620 hec­tares) and is made up of a mix­ture of let mixed farm­ing, birch wood­land, com­mer­cial wood­land, amen­ity wood­land and heath­er hill. There is an arter­i­al estate road which runs through the ground of approx­im­ately two miles length. The applic­ant is seek­ing approv­al for the upgrade of 2no exist­ing tracks which are not vis­ible on Ord­nance Sur­vey maps but have been have been in use since pri­or to 1980 by the cur­rent landown­er, mainly for mov­ing and feed­ing live­stock but also for the main­ten­ance and man­age­ment of the extens­ive woodland/​forest areas on the estate. Over a peri­od time these par­tic­u­lar tracks have become eroded and unsuit­able for vehicle move­ment into these areas of the estate, there­fore form­al upgrades have been deemed neces­sary that will allow such oper­a­tions as tim­ber extrac­tion and live­stock move­ments to con­tin­ue without fur­ther risk to the sur­round­ing land­scape and environment.

Map Of Glen­beg Estate, Grandtown On Spey Bound­ary — Blue. Woodland/​Forest — Green Shaded Areas

Image of Upgraded Private Way — Glen­beg Estate

Descrip­tion

Track A

Grid ref start NJ 00549 28904, East­ings 300550, Northings 828904, Lat 57.339768, Long ‑3.6538768 Grid ref fin­ish NJ 00291 28952, East­ings 300291, Northings 828952, Lat 57.340139 Long ‑3.6581898

Run­ning in a mostly east – west dir­ec­tion adja­cent to the Glen­beg Burn. Track A is approx­im­ately 311m long with an over­all ascent of approx 30m. There are 2no exist­ing nat­ur­al ford cross­ings of the burn in the west­ern half of the track with a turn­ing head at the west­ern ter­min­a­tion, allow­ing for artic­u­lated tim­ber vehicles to turn freely in a for­ward gear. Access and egress points to the burn are to be per­pen­dic­u­lar to the water­course where prac­tic­able with min­im­al gradi­ents to the embankments.

Sec­tion of exist­ing Track A — Adja­cent to Glen­beg Burn

Track B

Grid ref start NJ01313 26773, East­ings 301313, Northings 826773, Lat 57.320796, Long ‑3.6403477 Grid ref fin­ish NJ 01280 27111, East­ings 301280, Northings 827111, Lat 57.323820, Long ‑3.6410344

Run­ning south – north from a water­course south of Glen­beg House to the west of West­er Grag­gan, where a form­al track ter­min­ates on the south side of the burn. Track B is approx 650m long with an over­all ascent of approx 2m, it then ter­min­ates to the north where it meets the bound­ary of an exist­ing field.

North­ern Sec­tion of Track B — through woodland

Jus­ti­fic­a­tion

Improve­ments to the exist­ing tracks will allow for the con­tin­ued move­ment of live­stock with­in the estate and also assist in the extrac­tion of tim­ber from the wood­land. The old tracks were his­tor­ic­ally nev­er form­ally con­struc­ted as such, with no adequate pro­vi­sion of drain­age and the sur­faces were in a very in a poor unsus­tain­able con­di­tion. The improve­ments made will allow 4 x4 vehicles and tractors/​logging vehicles to con­tin­ue to use these tracks without fur­ther dam­age to the adja­cent land­scape and environment.

Meth­ods of Construction

The guidelines as set out by Scot­tish Nat­ur­al Her­it­ages Con­struc­ted Tracks in the Scot­tish High­lands (2015 edi­tion), also Good Prac­tise in Design, Con­struc­tion & Use of float­ing roads in Peat (Aug 2010) and SEPA advise on Pol­lu­tion Pre­ven­tion and Envir­on­ment­al man­age­ment. Flood risk, sur­face water drain­age and water engin­eer­ing works. Bor­row pits and Res­tor­a­tion and hab­it­at enhance­ment are to be fol­lowed dur­ing the plan­ning, design and con­struc­tion phase of the works. Ref­er­ence should also be made to ​‘The design and use of the struc­tur­al pave­ment of unsealed roads 2014’. Works to repair and improve the track would require the use of a 13 tonne tracked excav­at­or to min­im­ise wheel mark­ings and assist com­pac­tion, an 8 tonne tracked dump­er for use con­struct­ing the float­ing roads, and a 10 tonne wheeled dump­er and a vibrat­ing roller. A stone crush­er may be required on a load­er for grad­ing mater­i­al onsite. All plant and vehicles will be refuelled using on board pumps from bun­ded grab tanks to elim­in­ate the risk of spills. A spill kit will be car­ried on site at all times. For the most part of this exist­ing track mater­i­al will be obtained from ​‘win­ning’ on site, from shal­low bor­row pits which run par­al­lel to the upper most side of the track. This meth­od effi­ciently removes the require­ment for haul­ing large quant­it­ies of impor­ted mater­i­al long dis­tances into the site.

Typ­ic­al Track con­struc­tion Example 1.

Typ­ic­al Track Con­struc­tion Example 2.

Road cross­ing Cul­verts may have to be installed at vari­ous loc­a­tions to take drain­ing water away from the uppers side of the tracks. These will be placed at exist­ing sur­face water cross­ings to improve and main­tain the sur­face of the track by the use of large dia­met­er pip­ing. Twin walled pipe at either 450 or 600mm dia­met­er with silt trap and splash stone detail­ing at each ingress and out­let. All care­fully uplif­ted turfs will be laid aside for rein­state­ment onto bare sur­faces to encour­age regrowth. Par­al­lel bor­row pit drain­age cross­ings will be installed at max 150m centres at loc­a­tions to suit the exist­ing topography.

Typ­ic­al Cul­vert Inlet

Typ­ic­al Cul­vert Outlet

Any/​all Float­ing roads con­struc­tions to be car­ried out over the 2no sec­tions of track iden­ti­fied, should as set out in the SNH /​Forestry Com­mis­sion good prac­tise guid­ance for Float­ing Roads on Peat.

No works shall take place with­in the exist­ing burns at the ford cross­ing, any neces­sary works to exist­ing embank­ments shall be worked back­wards from the water line. At no point will plant or machinery work from with­in the water­courses. Silt net­ting to be installed where neces­sary to pre­vent debris enter­ing the watercourse.

Pro­posed Mater­i­als • Onsite mater­i­als won from par­al­lel bor­row pits; gen­er­ally all won, graded and worked with­in the cir­cum­fer­ence of the excav­at­or. • Lar­ger boulders brought up and laid aside for use at water­course cul­verts. • Cul­verts — large dia­met­er twin wall plastic pipe.

Design — Asso­ci­ated Doc­u­ments • 1:10000 loc­a­tion plan • 1:7500 site plan – inc delin­eation of the track and areas of spe­cif­ic fea­tures • 1:2500 block plan track A • 1:2500 block plan track B • Con­struc­tion Detail – Typ­ic­al pro­file of repair to exist­ing track inc. shal­low bor­row pit chan­nel • Con­struc­tion Detail – Road cross­ing cul­vert from par­al­lel bor­row pit drain • Hori­zont­al & ver­tic­al pro­files of Track A • Hori­zont­al & ver­tic­al pro­files of Track B