Another extract from the speech by Jim McKinnon, Chief Planner to the Scottish Government, when he opened the Sandown Charrette last Monday night:
"I’m not very keen on the term charrette, to be perfectly honest, and I wish I could find something better. And trying to explain to the First Minister and the Cabinet Secretary what a Charrette was, wasn’t that easy and trying to get him to commit to it, but interestingly our ministers have got really interested and enthusiastic about it. They see it as a really good way of engaging with local communities. It is interactive in which the public and local professionals work directly with the design team to generate a specific master plan.
You guys have probably been used to Highland Council coming along and saying here’s a plan what do you think of it? You might be used to a developer saying here’s a plan what do you think of it? This is very different, this is a plot of land, a large plot of land. I was astonished how big it is. It’s allocated for development. You could actually shape the future of Nairn if you do this properly or you can just do it on a site by site basis and that I’m afraid is what we’ve done far too often in the past. So the starting point is the site, its technical constraints but also its opportunities. What views across to the Black Isle and down to
3 comments:
You can shape the future but only with your hands tied behind your back it seems. you say planing guy said
"But it is against the background of the principle of development has been established for ten years on this site."
If that means you've been allowed to build houses there for a while then then ok but this was on a much smaller scale with a lot more green space. Around 10 years ago numbers were for about 90 houses on that Sandown site, which went up to 200+ at some point through a planning appliation. Then a tender brief for Sandown was sent to developers which was for around 300 houses which resulted in a sale to Deveron who came back and wanted to put 550 there.
Now this charrette is leading towards an end result of 350 houses. There can be no guarantee that numbers would not go up again. No numbers have been quoted for the Sandown site in this new highland plan, the Highland plan just says a development brief will deal with densities.
And what about the business park? whats happened to that will there be more houses on that area as well.
Look at the charrette maps so far - no business park on that.
"which resulted in a sale to Deveron" No sale there or the asking price of £17 million would have been in the Common Good Piggy bank.
The mannie comes back on the 29th for another public meeting and in the meantime you can still make contributions it seems. See one of the articles below.
There are no guarantees in any of this whether it be planning or any other decisions made. Who knows what the future will bring for any of us?
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