Item7Appendix3Objections20200111DETKincraig

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 7 Appendix 3 28/08/2020 AGENDA ITEM 7 APPENDIX 3 2020/0111/DET REP­RES­ENT­A­TIONS OBJECTIONS

BSCG info From:BSCG info Sent:25 May 2020 23:38:41 +0100 To:Planning Subject:2020 – 0111 BSCG com­ments Badenoch & Strath­spey Con­ser­va­tion Group Fiod­hag, Nethy­bridge, Inverness-shire PH25 3DJ Tel Scot­tish Char­ity No. SC003846 Email Web­site bscg​.org​.uk/ 25 May 2020 Dear Stephanie Wade 2020/0111/DET | Phase 1 — 40 unit hous­ing devel­op­ment | Land 160M South Of Bal­dow Cot­tage Alvie Estate Kin­craig BSCG objects to the above pro­pos­al. We request the oppor­tun­ity to address the plan­ning com­mit­tee when the applic­a­tion is determ­ined. The scale of devel­op­ment is excess­ive and out of pro­por­tion with the size of Kin­craig. The style of the house lay­out is unsym­path­et­ic and out of char­ac­ter with Kin­craig. The pro­por­tion of afford­able hous­ing is inad­equate. On top of this we emphas­ise the sig­ni­fic­ant prob­lems there are with so-called afford­able hous­ing being far from genu­inely afford­able. We are also con­cerned at the cli­mate change implic­a­tions of this devel­op­ment. The facil­it­ies at Kin­craig mean that reli­ance on private vehicles asso­ci­ated with this pro­pos­al is inev­it­able. Fur­ther, we do not see any evid­ence of high qual­ity energy effi­ciency in the design of the houses. The pro­pos­al site is a pro­duct­ive field that con­trib­utes very pos­it­ively to the land­scape, sup­ports a valu­able wet­land hol­low, sup­ports the knoll area, and can sup­port waders at dif­fer­ent times of year and brown hare which is an SBL spe­cies. The treat­ment of the knoll area is thor­oughly inad­equate to pro­tect this import­ant nat­ur­al her­it­age and land­scape fea­ture. Hous­ing adjoins the knoll. This is far too close to it and would have inev­it­able neg­at­ive impacts from house­hold­ers put­ting garden waste, lawn clip­pings etc over the fence onto the knoll area, and the likely spread of non-nat­ive invas­ive garden spe­cies. We are extremely con­cerned for the longer term sus­tain­ab­il­ity of the knoll area with so many people and their pets liv­ing so close to it and the pro­pos­als to pro­mote paths and a view­point on it. The pro­posed land­scap­ing and sub­sequent res­tor­a­tion of parts of the knoll area are com­pletely unac­cept­able. Such intrus­ive oper­a­tions would severely dam­age the soils and myco­lo­gic­al interest, that includes Hygro­cybe punicea. If the CNPA are minded to approve this applic­a­tion, then a extens­ive area around the knoll area should be pro­tec­ted so that this biod­i­verse nat­ur­al wood­land and grass­land can nat­ur­ally expand to cov­er a sub­stan­tially lar­ger area than it does today.

There has been sub­stan­tial loss of high qual­ity hab­it­ats around Kin­craig in recent years, with over-devel­op­ment and loss of import­ant wood­land at The Knoll and loss of valu­able, long estab­lished fields to the dualling of the A9 and asso­ci­ated com­pounds. These fields con­trib­uted to hab­it­at for waders and grass­land fungi (includ­ing Hygro­cybe punicea), flowers and inver­teb­rates. Such unsym­path­et­ic over­de­vel­op­ment with sig­ni­fic­ant neg­at­ive impacts should have no place in the Nation­al Park. Yours sin­cerely Gus Jones Convener

Com­ments for Plan­ning Applic­a­tion 2020/0111/DET Applic­a­tion Sum­mary Applic­a­tion Num­ber: 2020/0111/DET Address: Land 160M South Of Bal­dow Cot­tage Alvie Estate Kin­craig Pro­pos­al: Phase 1 — 40 unit hous­ing devel­op­ment Case Officer: Stephanie Wade Cus­tom­er Details Name: Dr Leith Penny Address: The Old Manse Kin­craig Com­ment Details Com­menter Type: Neigh­bour Stance: Cus­tom­er objects to the Plan­ning Applic­a­tion Com­ment Reas­ons: Comment:Firstly, the land­scaped plant­ing strip which sep­ar­ates the adja­cent Mac­bean Road devel­op­ment from the B9152 has been a suc­cess. It is a pity that such a treat­ment is not included for the NW bound­ary in this pro­pos­al. It is clear that the developer’s ambi­tions for the site involve a sig­ni­fic­antly lar­ger num­ber of units than the 40 envis­aged in the 2010 CNPA site brief. Because of this, there is insuf­fi­cient room for a pro­tect­ive plant­ing bar­ri­er of 15m depth, which the site brief sug­ges­ted as a min­im­um. Instead, the depth of the pro­posed bar­ri­er plant­ing is repeatedly reduced to a very few metres by the incur­sions of the private gar­dens, in a saw-tooth plan form. This will not deliv­er the same pro­tect­ive bene­fits to the new homes that the Mac­bean Road bound­ary plant­ing con­fers, nor will it much soften the impact of the devel­op­ment viewed from bey­ond the site. If the scheme was revised to deliv­er a hous­ing dens­ity in line with the site brief, a more sat­is­fact­ory bound­ary treat­ment (as well as a more gen­er­ous intern­al lay­out, espe­cially in terms of usable garden space) could eas­ily be achieved. As it is, the inten­tion to leave a large pro­por­tion of the site avail­able for Phase 2 has required the place­ment of the intern­al road as close to the B9152 as pos­sible, which in turn explains the skewed ori­ent­a­tion of the houses between the two roads, and their very small gar­dens. Secondly, the capa­city of the sewage sys­tem and SUDS needs to be assessed in the con­text of the over­all load on final com­ple­tion of the devel­op­ment, not merely the first phase. Should the 40 Phase 1 units rep­res­ent the max­im­um per­miss­ible load for these sys­tems, then the con­strained lay­out of Phase 1 will prove to have been unne­ces­sary. Finally, the 2010 site brief required the pre­par­a­tion of a land­scape man­age­ment and main­ten­ance plan. I can find no ref­er­ence to such a plan, nor the arrange­ments to imple­ment it, among the applic­a­tion documents.

Com­ments for Plan­ning Applic­a­tion 2020/0111/DET Applic­a­tion Sum­mary Applic­a­tion Num­ber: 2020/0111/DET Address: Land 160M South Of Bal­dow Cot­tage Alvie Estate Kin­craig Pro­pos­al: Phase 1 — 40 unit hous­ing devel­op­ment Case Officer: Stephanie Wade Cus­tom­er Details Name: Dr Dewi Owens Address: 18 Mac­Bean Road Kin­craig Kin­gussie Com­ment Details Com­menter Type: Mem­ber of Pub­lic Stance: Cus­tom­er objects to the Plan­ning Applic­a­tion Com­ment Reas­ons: Comment:We would like to com­ment on the plan­ning applic­a­tion, and raise the fol­low­ing concerns:

1. The use of cemen­ti­tious clad­ding is inap­pro­pri­ate in this rur­al set­ting, as is the choice of con­crete tile roof­ing mater­i­al. Loc­ally sourced larch clad­ding allowed to nat­ur­ally sil­ver, and slate roof­ing, would be more appro­pri­ate, or the use of off-white render sim­il­ar to exist­ing devel­op­ments in the vicin­ity. Cemen­ti­tious clad­ding may have its place in an urb­an set­ting where there is no pre­ced­ent for the use of nat­ur­al mater­i­als, but not in a rur­al vil­lage in the Nation­al Park. Even in a more urb­an­ised set­ting, we feel that the use of cemen­ti­tious clad­ding in The Peaks, Cale­do­nia Place, Aviemore, is a ret­ro­grade step/​choice of mater­i­al and does noth­ing to enhance the built envir­on­ment of the CNP.
2. The site sec­tion and plan show that houses are posi­tioned along the most elev­ated part of the land and sev­er­al of the houses in this part of the devel­op­ment are fully two storeys high, which will cause loss of north-east­erly out­look from the exist­ing prop­er­ties in the vil­lage. The site lay­out plan shows unac­cept­ably high elev­a­tions. Neigh­bour­ing devel­op­ments are more appro­pri­ately pre­dom­in­antly lim­ited to one and a half storey houses. https://​wam​.high​land​.gov​.uk/​w​a​m​/​f​i​l​e​s​/​D​9​3​D​7​C​1​8​D​1​F​E​7​3​9​C​9​F​8​B​9​7​7​6​5​9​2​B​C​6​2​3​/​p​d​f​/​2​0​_​0​1563_ FUL-SITE_SECTION_PLAN-2081647.pdf
3. The land where the devel­op­ment is pro­posed is an import­ant wild­life hab­it­at for nest­ing Lap­wings. Agri­cul­tur­al activ­ity (? plough­ing) was noticed in the field on the 7^th May, poten­tially dis­rupt­ing nest­ing activ­ity. Build­ing on this land does not con­serve or enhance the nat­ur­al her­it­age of the area (CNPA aim 1A).
4. Roads are pre­pared for a poten­tial phase 2 — it is our under­stand­ing that the land has been ear­marked for 40 houses in total. Why is a phase 2 being con­sidered, espe­cially with the drainage

chal­lenges on the land?