Item8Appendix2bGeneral20190113DET

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 8 Appendix 2b 24/05/2019

AGENDA ITEM 8

APPENDIX 2B

2019/0113/DET

GEN­ER­AL

Com­ments for Plan­ning Applic­a­tion 2019/0113/DET

Applic­a­tion Sum­mary Applic­a­tion Num­ber: 2019/0113/DET Address: Meall Tio­n­ail Access Track Blair Atholl Pro­pos­al: Alter­a­tions to hill track (in ret­ro­spect) Case Officer: Edward Swales

Cus­tom­er Details Name: Mr George Allan Address: 7 Both­well Ter­race Pit­med­den Ellon

Com­ment Details Com­menter Type: Mem­ber of Pub­lic Stance: Cus­tom­er made com­ments neither object­ing to or sup­port­ing the Plan­ning Applic­a­tion Com­ment Reas­ons: Comment:I am writ­ing on behalf of the North East Moun­tain Trust (NEMT), a Scot­tish Char­ity (SCIO 008783) based in the Grampi­an area, which rep­res­ents the interests of hill-goers and those who enjoy vis­it­ing wild land. NEMT mem­ber­ship, com­pris­ing twelve hill­walk­ing and climb­ing clubs along with indi­vidu­al mem­bers, totals over 900 people. While NEMT has a par­tic­u­lar focus on the wider Grampi­an area, it acts in the interests of its mem­bers in respect of issues affect­ing hill coun­try, coastal and remoter areas across the whole of Scot­land. NEMT would like to make the fol­low­ing com­ments on this applic­a­tion: 1) It is dis­ap­point­ing that the applic­ant did not see fit to cre­ate a cent­ral veget­a­tion strip when under­tak­ing the main­ten­ance work on the track. These sig­ni­fic­antly reduce the visu­al intru­sion of tracks in the wider land­scape. 2) Fur­ther res­tor­a­tion work is required to reduce the impact of the bor­row pits and the Park should make this a form­al con­di­tion of con­sent. 3) NEMT would like to com­mend the Nation­al Park for requir­ing the sub­mis­sion of a ret­ro­spect­ive applic­a­tion in this case. Doing so clearly sig­nals to estates that for track work, bey­ond lim­ited routine main­ten­ance such as filling in pot holes and clear­ing exist­ing drain­age, full applic­a­tions must be made where a track is for sport­ing pur­poses or a Pri­or Noti­fic­a­tion be sub­mit­ted if a track genu­inely has per­mit­ted devel­op­ment status.