Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Breaking news Nairn River CC has a secretary at last and another housing estate for Lochloy?

A long session at Nairn River Community Council yesterday evening that started with the end of the search for a secretary. Stephen Fuller steps into the breach and was proposed and nominated very quickly indeed as other potential candidates breathed a sigh of relief.

The sole Highland Councillor present was Tom Heggie and it seems the ward's four councillors have divided up the Community Councils between them and Tom will be coming to River CC. Lots of good craic about getting the short straw. 


Stopping the proposed application for S2S oil transfers in the Moray Firth was discussed and the recent trip to Holyrood by Cromarty Rising and some folk from Nairnshire who got home and decided to creat “Nairnshire Rising” on this side of the Firth. Ongoing and a new application for ship to ship transfers expected in October. 

Murd thought that the riverside was now totally neglected since the Highland Council took over the grass cutting responsibilities into the public sector. 

There was a bit of a blether about dangerous trees up the riverside.

The meeting heard how the Nairn workclub will soon be closing. The club offers help to those who need to write up their CV for meeting the requirements of claiming universal credit. Folk that have no computers at home can go in and get one to one help. No more funding, a vital facility is going and what next for folk on the edge of the cliff? Depressing stuff, hopefully something can be done here. 

Mike Henderson was concerned that although there now have been traffic wardens in the Highland Council area for some time there seems to have been little or no enforcement action in Nairn.

A bit of a stushie over the brown bin scenario and it's downside. You would have to have been there to get the craic on that on as a robust exchange developed between two of the CC's members. 

Mike Henderson spoke again, this time on why the full set of 20 beds at Nairn Hospital are not all in operation.

And then there was planning and :

“Proposal of Application Notice for site at NA2 South Kingsteps, Nairn
Please find enclosed a Proposal of Application Notice (POAN) for a site at South Kingsteps,
Nairn. The following details are included:

Proposal of Application Notice for site at NA2 South Kingsteps, Nairn

As the document from Springfield stated:

The site is identified as NA2 for residential development within the Inner Moray Firth Local
Development Plan 2015.

Further documentation from Springfield that entered the public domain at the River CC meeting stated:

“PROPOSALS FOR RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENT AND ASSOCIATED INFRASTRUCTURE AT SOUTH KINGSTEPS, NAIRN, ALLOCATED AS NA2 WITHIN THE INNER MORAY FIRTH LOCAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN 2015 Notice is hereby given of a ‘drop-in’ public exhibition to learn more about the above proposed planning application which will be submitted to the Highland Council. The exhibition will be in the Nairn Community and Arts Centre, King Street, Nairn, IV12 4BQ on Thursday 31st August 2017 between 2:00pm – 8.00pm.”

There we go folks looks like the Lochloy suburbs could get a whole lot bigger in the future. When this site went out for comment in the Inner Moray Firth Local Development Plan it attracted a lot of adverse comment - have things cooled down? We'll see no doubt as the consultation and the eventual planning application emerge.

Here's a wee Highland Council map we featured on the Gurn some time ago which shows you where the NA2 site is.

Click on image to enlarge
There was quite a bit of other stuff discussed at River CC too, if time and memory permits (after a wee diversion afterwards to the Seaforth Club) we will make an attempt to retrieve from remaining brain cells later today. Oidhche mhath!