Item8Appendix3aObjection20190215DET

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHOR­ITY Plan­ning Com­mit­tee Agenda Item 8 Appendix 3A 21/02/2020

AGENDA ITEM 8

APPENDIX ЗА

2019/0215/DET

REP­RES­ENT­A­TIONS OBJECTIONS

BSCG info From:BSCG info Sent: Thu, 9 Jan 2020 23:47:23 +0000 To:Planning;Stephanie Wade Subject:2019/0215 Comments

Badenoch & Strath­spey Con­ser­va­tion Group Fiod­hag, Nethy­bridge, Inverness-shire PH25 3DJ

Scot­tish Char­ity No. SC003846 Email info@​bscg.​org.​uk Web­site bscg​.org​.uk/

Dear Stephanie Wade 2019/0215/DET | Demoli­tion of house, erec­tion of 9 houses, form­a­tion of access track and path | Tigh Mhuileann Boat Of Garten High­land PH24 3BG

BSCG objects to the above pro­pos­al and requests the oppor­tun­ity to address the plan­ning com­mit­tee when the applic­a­tion is determined.

The pro­pos­al is not alloc­ated in the LDP and accord­ingly the pub­lic have not had the oppor­tun­ity to com­ment on the suit­ab­il­ity of this site through the devel­op­ment plan process.

The imme­di­ate sur­round­ings of the pro­pos­al site are of high eco­lo­gic­al value. The wood­land is iden­ti­fied in the Nat­ive Wood­land Sur­vey of Scot­land as upland birch­wood of very high nat­ive­ness and nat­ur­al­ness. The wood­land is dom­in­ated by birch, aspen and wil­low and includes a few unusu­ally large indi­vidu­al birch and wil­low trees as well as valu­able fallen and stand­ing dead wood of these spe­cies. Much of the wil­low is grow­ing in wet con­di­tions with sea­son­ally extens­ive stand­ing water, in this wet, ripari­an wood­land. Recent obser­va­tions have estab­lished that the wil­lows sup­port a sig­ni­fic­ant pop­u­la­tion of the Scar­let Splash fungus (Cytidia salicina). This spe­cies was iden­ti­fied in the ​‘short list’ as in need of urgent and focused con­ser­va­tion action in the CNPA’s Cairngorms Nature Action Plan 2013 – 2018. We note that the same CNAP refers to aspen being ​“a very rare com­pon­ent of woods” and emphas­ises that the CNP is ​“the UK strong­hold for aspen” and that ​“these woods sup­port many rare and scarce moths, flies, fungi, lichen and mosses that occur nowhere else in the UK” (p40).The CNAP also emphas­ises the import­ance of Strathspey’s wet and ripari­an wood­land, recog­nising that this hab­it­at ​“is prob­ably unsur­passed in a UK and, in some cases, European context”.

We dis­agree with SNH’s apprais­al that addi­tion­al houses at this loc­a­tion would not increase dis­turb­ance to caper­cail­lie in Boat wood, and regard SNH’s reas­ons as unreal­ist­ic. SNH’s claim that a dis­tance of 1.5k is a sig­ni­fic­ant deterrent to people using the woods stretches credu­lity, espe­cially giv­en the rising pop­ular­ity of run­ning, cyc­ling and e- bik­ing, all of which reg­u­larly involve far great­er dis­tances. SNH makes the oppos­ite argu­ment to Seafield Estate’s claim when the Estate was seek­ing per­mis­sion for the now com­pleted new hous­ing with­in what was part of the woods, not many years ago. The Estate then claimed that people use the wood for recre­ation and it doesn’t mat­ter where the houses are, they will still use the woods for their own recre­ation and dog walk­ing. Argu­ably, this more closely agrees with our know­ledge of use of woods for recre­ation. People drive con­sid­er­able dis­tances to access Boat woods (and oth­er loc­al woods) for their own recre­ation and for dog walk­ing. The altern­at­ive walk­ing areas closer to the pro­pos­al site that SNH cite are very dif­fer­ent in nature and length to the routes in Boat wood, and it is reas­on­able to con­sider they would be used in addi­tion to, rather than instead of the woods. SNH’s ref­er­ence to the addi­tion of 12 house­holds being a small num­ber com­pared to the total num­ber of house­holds in Boat fails to take account ofboth cumu­lat­ive impacts and tip­ping points. In addi­tion, res­id­ents of the pro­pos­al will be driv­ing through Boat for many reas­ons (school, shop, activ­it­ies in the hall) and can com­bine this with walk­ing, run­ning, cyc­ling, dog walk­ing, etc in the woods.

We are con­cerned at the use of a sep­tic tank, which we look upon as regress­ive and an option that should only be con­sidered as an abso­lute lastresort. There is clearly a real­ist­ic option, albeit costly, of the pro­pos­al con­nect­ing to the main sewage sys­tem. The burn run­ning through the wood­land is con­nec­ted to the River Spey SAC; in addi­tion it is appar­ent that the burn is of eco­lo­gic­al import­ance in its own right. BSCG is con­cerned at the vul­ner­ab­il­ity of the burn to pol­lu­tion from the sep­tic tank and soakaway. We note that SNH has said an Appro­pri­ate Assess­ment is required due to a likely sig­ni­fic­ant effect unless the design of the waste water treat­ment can ensure that no neg­at­ive impacts on the burn or SAC could occur. We have a major con­cern that weak­nesses will not be appar­ent until it is too late. This view is sup­por­ted by exper­i­ence from oth­er sites in Strath­spey. For example, at Boat’s WWTW many prob­lems and acknow­ledged fail­ures con­tin­ue to come to light, and are prov­ing dif­fi­cult to resolve as has recently been acknow­ledged in the cur­rent court case, that has involved alleg­a­tions crit­ic­al of SEPA, Scot­tish Water and oth­ers. BSCG is also con­cerned at the pro­pos­al for road drain­age and sur­face drain­age from the prop­er­ties to be dis­charged to the burn in large flow con­di­tions, so provid­ing a route by which pol­lut­ants can enter the burn. Such pol­lut­ants could include chem­ic­al fer­til­isers and weed killers that may be used both on people’s gar­dens and in the com­munity areas of land­scape plant­ing. We note that the sep­tic tank and soakaway are loc­ated out­side the red line bound­ary and query wheth­er this is in line with plan­ning norms.

It is not clear as to wheth­er deliv­ery of the pro­posed path con­nect­ing the devel­op­ment to the vil­lage is guar­an­teed, and if so how. The path is not part of this applic­a­tion and BSW and Seafield Estate have appar­ently indic­ated they intend to seek out­side fund­ing towards the cost of the path and bridge. We are con­cerned that the path and bridge need to be sens­it­ively and thought­fully loc­ated to avoid sig­ni­fic­ant neg­at­ive impacts on the burn and wood­land, as well as poten­tially on wild­life res­tor­a­tion and man­age­ment pro­jects at Milton Loch. We note that at Boat WWTW there have been prob­lems with the pub­lic path, includ­ing unfore­seen wild­life impacts. We have con­sid­er­able con­cerns about the plant­ing plans and pro­posed post-con­struc­tion man­age­ment regimes. Salix fra­gil­is, Viburnum opu­lus and Acer campestre are inap­pro­pri­ate spe­cies in the con­text of this area of Strath­spey, and espe­cially in prox­im­ity to wood­land areas of high nat­ive­ness and nat­ur­al­ness. Intro­du­cing Gorse to the site is far less appro­pri­ate than allow­ing Juni­per to flour­ish on the site. Also Gorse could intro­duce a fire risk. The aspen in the vicin­ity is suck­er­ing vig­or­ously in places and its nat­ur­al spread should be fostered. The beat up replace­ment peri­od of appar­ently only 3 years may be too short to ensure suc­cess­ful estab­lish­ment of sig­ni­fic­ant num­bers of trees. Some houses are sig­ni­fic­antly too close to exist­ing trees and this is likely to res­ult in felling of trees. We con­sider that there should be a sub­stan­tially great­er hold back dis­tance between exist­ing trees and the houses and their curtilages.

The houses are described as afford­able rent­al prop­er­ties yet the res­id­ents will have to pay for the main­ten­ance of their private road access to their houses. It seems ques­tion­able wheth­er this is in line with the 4^th aim of the park, ​“To pro­mote sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic and social devel­op­ment of the area’s com­munit­ies”, or eco­nom­ic­ally sus­tain­able in the longer term.

Yours sin­cerely Gus Jones Convener