Planning Committee meeting - Item 5: addendum report River Tromie - 14 November 2025

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Item 5 Plan­ning Com­mit­tee 14 Novem­ber 2025 Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Page 1 of 4

Addendum com­mit­tee report

Devel­op­ment proposed: Realign­ment of 400m of River Tromie at Land 670M NW of Dell of Kil­liehuntly Farm­house, Kingussie

Ref­er­ence: 2025/0104/DET

Applic­ant: RSPB Scotland

Date called-in: 12 May 2025

Recom­mend­a­tion: Approve sub­ject to conditions

Case officer: Kath­er­ine Don­nach­ie, Plan­ning Officer

---

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Item 5 Plan­ning Com­mit­tee 14 Novem­ber 2025 Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Page 2 of 4

Update

1. This plan­ning applic­a­tion was deferred at the 29 August 2025 meet­ing of the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee to under­take a site vis­it, which was sub­sequently held on 10 Octo­ber 2025.

2. This addendum report provides a brief update on a small num­ber of plan­ning and pro­ced­ur­al mat­ters with respect to the applic­a­tion. It should be read in con­junc­tion with the main Plan­ning Com­mit­tee report on this plan­ning applic­a­tion, and the recom­mend­a­tion therein, which remains as repor­ted to Plan­ning Com­mit­tee on 29 August 2025.

3. At the 29 August meet­ing of the Plan­ning Com­mit­tee, the case officer repor­ted to mem­bers that a late rep­res­ent­a­tion had been received. This rep­res­ent­a­tion was received too late to be cir­cu­lated under the terms of stand­ing orders at that time. Mat­ters con­sidered to be mater­i­al plan­ning con­sid­er­a­tions were verbally repor­ted to the Com­mit­tee, and the writer of the rep­res­ent­a­tion atten­ded the com­mit­tee site vis­it, as did the applic­ants and agent.

4. The late rep­res­ent­a­tion raised a mater­i­al land use plan­ning issue in terms of query­ing the own­er­ship of the solum of the river, although no spe­cif­ic evid­ence was presen­ted to sub­stan­ti­ate claims that it did not belong to the applic­ants. The applic­ants had com­pleted own­er­ship cer­ti­fic­a­tion when sub­mit­ting the plan­ning applic­a­tion con­firm­ing they owned all land asso­ci­ated with the applic­a­tion. This is essen­tially a leg­al mat­ter. How­ever, the own­er­ship query was brought to the atten­tion of the applic­ants who, hav­ing con­tac­ted their soli­cit­ors in the inter­im, remain sat­is­fied that they own the land asso­ci­ated with this plan­ning application.

5. The rep­res­ent­a­tion also raised quer­ies regard­ing (a) flood risk in the sur­round­ing area as a res­ult of the devel­op­ment and (b) wheth­er a gravel plug down­stream of the present breach on the east riverb­ank could be removed to lower the river­bed level to pre­vent water flow­ing towards Dell of Kil­liehuntly and an engin­eered repair car­ried out to the riverb­ank on that side of the exist­ing channel.

---

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Item 5 Plan­ning Com­mit­tee 14 Novem­ber 2025 Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Page 3 of 4

1. In rela­tion to point (b), it is import­ant to note that this altern­at­ive sug­ges­tion is not part of the cur­rent plan­ning applic­a­tion, would involve land out­with the red line applic­a­tion site, and can­not be con­sidered under the terms of the present sub­mis­sion. Not­with­stand­ing this lim­it­a­tion, the Plan­ning Ser­vice asked tech­nic­al con­sul­tees (SEPA and the High­land Coun­cil Flood Risk Man­age­ment Team) if they wished to com­ment on the con­tents of the late representation.

2. The High­land Coun­cil Flood Risk Man­age­ment team had no addi­tion­al com­ments. As repor­ted in the com­mit­tee paper to the 29 August meet­ing, the Team’s response to this applic­a­tion pre­vi­ously con­firmed no objec­tions and high­lighted that they were gen­er­ally sup­port­ive of the type of work proposed.

3. SEPA have con­firmed that they main­tain their pos­i­tion of no objec­tion, high­light­ing that flood mod­el­ling has been under­taken for the sub­mit­ted Flood Risk Assess­ment. From the inform­a­tion provided they are sat­is­fied that the pro­pos­als are unlikely to lead to an increase in flood risk to prop­er­ties, with the mod­el­ling indic­at­ing very loc­al­ised changes in flood risk at the loc­a­tion of the chan­nel works. Any changes to flood levels / extents are very loc­al­ised to the chan­nel works and are not expec­ted to extend bey­ond the sec­tion of cut chan­nel. In addi­tion, a Water Envir­on­ment Con­trolled Activ­it­ies Reg­u­la­tions (CAR) licence was issued in June for chan­nel realign­ment, sed­i­ment remov­al and intro­duc­tion, and embank­ment remov­al. They have noted that it is their under­stand­ing that these licensed activ­it­ies form the basis of the plan­ning applic­a­tion pro­pos­als and vice versa. These pro­pos­als were assessed by SEPA spe­cial­ists as being accept­able activ­it­ies for the River Tromie which should provide some improve­ment on the cur­rent, as well as longer term, status of the watercourse.

4. In rela­tion to the com­ments on remov­al of the gravel plug, SEPA noted that they do not routinely provide site spe­cif­ic advice on such sug­ges­tions as they need to focus their resources on respond­ing to devel­op­ment pro­pos­als set out in plan­ning applic­a­tions and / or reg­u­lat­ory author­isa­tion applic­a­tions. Whilst acknow­ledging that these altern­at­ive sug­ges­tions do not form part of this plan­ning applic­a­tion and can­not be con­sidered in the determ­in­a­tion of this sub­mis­sion, they high­lighted that there is inform­a­tion about dredging (e.g. the sug­ges­ted remov­al of the gravel plug) and river engin­eer­ing on their web­site which may be of gen­er­al background

---

Cairngorms Nation­al Park Author­ity Item 5 Plan­ning Com­mit­tee 14 Novem­ber 2025 Ugh­dar­ras Pàirc Nàiseanta a’ Mhon­aidh Ruaidh Page 4 of 4

interest: Dredging | Scot­tish Envir­on­ment Pro­tec­tion Agency (SEPA). This includes a sec­tion on dredging and flood­ing as follows:

“Dredging is often viewed as the solu­tion to flood­ing on the basis that the chan­nel is made big­ger so it can con­tain more water. The space cre­ated by remov­ing sed­i­ment from a river is often small com­pared to the volume of water gen­er­ated dur­ing flood events. Even if dredging reduces flood risk loc­ally, it is likely that this simply passes the prob­lem downstream.

While dredging is required in some cir­cum­stances, it is usu­ally not the most effect­ive or sus­tain­able approach to man­aging flood risk in a catch­ment. Chan­ging the way sed­i­ment is trans­por­ted in rivers often res­ults in unex­pec­ted changes, such as increased erosion that can spread upstream and down­stream. This eroded sed­i­ment can quickly refill the space that was cre­ated by dredging, as well as dam­aging river hab­it­ats and eco­sys­tems, worsen­ing the situ­ation. Nat­ur­al pro­cesses, involving the erosion, trans­port, and depos­ition of sed­i­ment with­in rivers mean that any bene­fits of dredging are often short term.”

1. Fol­low­ing the 29 August Com­mit­tee meet­ing, the applic­ant also provided a brief pro­ject sum­mary to assist in the con­sid­er­a­tion of the applic­a­tion. This is attached as Appendix 3 and sum­mar­ises key points of the pro­posed devel­op­ment and the options considered.