Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Born again Nairnshire Committee stands up to Planning Department’s Nairn South Sledgehammer

The official from Highland Council planning department looked visibly shaken as the newly launched Nairnshire Area committee put down its marker behind the people of Nairn against the Nairn South transport proposals that the planners wanted to put to the public for yet more consultation. Michael Green, the newly elected Chair of the Nairnshire Committee said that he was not likely to support the planning department’s recommendation. Up in the Courthouse chamber this morning he continued:

“It is important as a matter or record I outline why I am doing this. We’ve had two years of consultations, with the opinions of individuals, community councillors and councillors and we’ve been against it from day one. The infrastructure just can’t cope and in this process of consultation which I said has been long, tortuous and involved, the one constant has been this assertion from the people of Nairn, individuals and community councils that we do not want this scale of development at Nairn South.”

Michael went on to describe some of the infrastructure options as Thunderbird options which involved tunnelling, narrowing roads and all sorts of things with one constant that they would all be incredibly expensive. He went on to say that it seemed to be a means to an end “and that end was the development of Nairn South at any cost.”

Michael said it was sensible to carry out a new Nairnshire master plan as there were more sites more suitable for development than Nairn South. He said:

“To sum this up Nairn said no, the PIE committee said no, the reporter said no and I’m pretty sure the man from Del Monte would probably say no. 

There was then more discussion with Stephen Fuller and Laurie Fraser asking for technical procedural detail relating to the planning department’s document before the committee. 

Michael then came to his motion: “I would like to move to defer approval of the recommendation for officers to reconsider the relevance and context of the Nairn South master plan in relation to the proposed Nairnshire action plan.”

Stephen Fuller seconded the motion. Liz MacDonald was not present as she had had to earlier leave the room for this Nairn South item as she has land that is included in local development plans. 

Before he left the planning official said: “The principle of development remains in place for its allocation in the development plan and we have to assess any development that is submitted to the Council.”

UPDATE Michael Green tells the Gurn that his motion actually went through 2-1 with Laurie voting against. At the time this observer thought it was 3 for the motion, thanks for that Michael. 

Gurn opinion:

I think everybody knew that this would not be the end of the story, it was about the new Nairnshire committee making a stand with the people of Nairn against inappropriate development zoning that has come our way from the Inverness direction. If the community had been allowed to decide for itself where to build then there could have been quite a few more badly needed houses constructed by now and probably a lot of them on the Common Good land at Sandown – land the community owns and where we could dictate the style and density of development and the adjacent amenities and probably provide local employment in the construction if we were canny enough. 

The direction of travel is, thankfully, towards giving power back to communities. In the new environment will the planners now persist in trying to crack the Nairnshire nut with their sledgehammer or will there be an outbreak of common sense and at last a realisation that Nairn doesn’t want development in an area where the infrastructure can’t take it. This decision by Michael and Stephen puts a huge rock in the way of the Highland Council planning department juggernaut and it is up to them if they want to crash headlong into it. If the planners find any of this new situation embarrassing then, frankly, to this observer it is simply their own fault. 

12 comments:

Joe telfer said...

Well done Michael, Laurie and Stephen, Some more unity with the Community councils and maybe Nairn is on the way to more democracy to offset Highland region !

Graisg said...

Joe Michael Green actually tells that Laurie voted actually voted against, my mistake.

Joe Telfer said...

Too good to be true I guess !! Looks like you'll have to get the community councils together to demand a united front !

Graisg said...

The town's community councils have worked together in the past to fight the planners Joe and the newly elected members of River and West/Suburban have already had discussions about how to work together on the larger issues that affect the town and Nairnshire in general and most of that in recent times has been inappropriate development. Not NIMBYISM either but simply a desire to get control of things for the community and start building sustainably to meet housing needs in Nairn.
Time for planners and developers to back off and listen to what Nairn wants and that has to crystallise out of the Courthouse and the new area committee reflecting the wishes of the community and not dictats from Glenurquhart Road. Hopefully the times they really are a' changing.

Anonymous said...

How many new Council or Album houses do we need ideally? Where are they going to go? They'll always be in someone's backyard. We don't need 3 here and 6 there. We need hundreds for folk who can't afford a mortgage.

Joe Telfer said...

Amen to that !

Graisg said...

Yeah we need a lot and one thing that is often mentioned is that we need more accommodation for single people, be that the young starting out on their own or people that prefer that lifestyle etc.

That is why this observer sees Sandown as a priority to get started. The town (us) own that land, we can decide what type of housing goes on there, create some kind of mechanism through the Common Good that ensures the community has the total or majority say in who gets to live in social housing there and if we are really smart we could use local labour and businesses to go about designing and building these houses. In isn't a far our dream - we just need all the interest groups in Nairn to pull together as Alastair Noble suggests and we can get on with it and create our own future as a community rather than out of town planners and developers imposing what they think is good for us.

Anonymous said...

Shame that we were not unanimous but nevertheless an excellent vote. Sandown is certainly the way to go and as you say, singles and young couples should get priority for the much needed houses. No doubt we have not heard the last of this.

Never Trust a Hippy said...

Sell off individual plots and let people build their own houses without too many restrictions. Might end up with something great along the lines of Findhorn's Field of Dreams.

Anonymous said...

Mmmmmm ....... Some good ideas about local jobs local services local houses .... all for "locals" ....... But, what is a "local"? Am I "local enough"? Will we be allowed out of Nairn to visit other locals in their localities? Will we be allowed to take their jobs? Use their services? Relocate into their houses?
Will "they" have a Gurn to keep the outsiders outside?
It's all a bit Royston Vasey ......

Never Trust a Hippy said...

Now dat's what I'm talking about.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JbqJNAUOR8

Anonymous said...

The Nairn Bypass seems to be on it's way and those who want a Nairn South development will be pushing for the lunacy of a Nairn South Junction...