Tuesday, October 20, 2015

"Views sought on ­­Highland Planning Policies through new consultation portal " Gurn verdict - not for the faint hearted

You can start on this Highland Council news archive page.  Then three clicks later you will find yourself here.  There's a lot of officialise in there folks - that is in the Highland-wide Local Development Plan 2, Main Issues Report - try the Development Hierachy page for a quick taste of what you have to wade through.

Anybody out there with the ability to translate some of this stuff and articulate what those Gurnites who have been so fed up with Highland Council planning policy over recent years should say in response to this mysterious tome?  Any brave soul out there that is even slightly familiar with some of this and would like to give us all a few hints? The Community Councils (about to change over soon) will no doubt be consulted on this stuff too. It just doesn't seem to be the sort of stuff that the everyday citizen concerned about planning issues could find the time and energy to deal with.

Or just maybe there is nothing to worry about and Laurie Fraser, Michael Green, Liz MacDonald and Stephen Fuller will shorty issue a joint statement saying this document offers Nairn and environs a brand new bright and beautiful planning future where the community gets the upper hand? Have no fear and keep clear of the consultation portal?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

In summary, we are being asked to comment on a new set of planning policies with no information to what the new local development plans will determine are the land areas to which these policies apply, e.g which settlements are now considered to be appropriate for development.

On the positive side, I suppose that once we know what the policies are then locally we can decide which land allocations are still valid, assuming we are consulted at a local level on the local plan and don't have it railroaded by the officials.

On the negative side, we are only three years into the existing 20 year plan, which will be replaced by the output from this consultation in 2017. How much money is all this rework costing us?