Tommy happy with Charrette, Simon “A bit of concern"

Tommy opened discussion on the Sandown Charrette at the River Community Council meeting last night, he said:”It went down very well over the four days, and the chap that came from the Scottish Parliament, Jim Mckinnon, he was really up for getting things to happen. Over the four days it was so informative, it was very well done and a large amount of people turned up. I was very impressed.” Tommy then told the meeting that Jim McKinnon was coming back for the ward forum meeting in the Golf View on February the 29^th with the end product.

Graham Marsden then added that the drawings would be open to public view in the Golf View from 3-7 p.m.

Simon Noble said: “One of the things I’d like to express a bit of concern about is, I went along to one morning session and though it was being run extremely professionally, and like Tommy I was impressed by the event, however I was also struck by the fact that there wasn’t anyone younger than me in attendance there and from what I understand there wasn’t throughout the whole of the four days. So it is clear to me that the representation of Nairn was singular and not broad. So I think it is misleading on the basis of the charrette to describe the shape that is presented to the developer as being something that is endorsed by the people of Nairn.

Ian Gordon critisced the publicitiy for the event and said, “They did not go about it correctly.”

Liz then spoke: “It’s going to be an ongoing process of development, they’ll stage in development, parts of it, stage by stage. We’ve already agreed that the allotments can go ahead and that will be going to the March Highland Council committee. We’ve got that plan, but that’s not the end of it, it’s only the beginning.”

River CC unhappy with the way joint community council meetings are going

Discontent with the way the joint Community Council meetings are being run emerged at the meeting of the River CC yesterday (Tuesday). Leslie Boulton was the first to speak out, he said:

“I went to that meeting in the Academy and in fact it wasn’t a joint meeting it was another Community Council meeting. That’s going to be four times a year, we have 11 meetings a year. Already I’ve heard the police report 3 times this year.”

He then went on to give a list of subjects that he thought should have been talked about at the joint meeting but weren’t, such as the by-pass, the co-op and the garage.
Tommy was the next to speak: “That’s what I say Leslie and they keep telling us we should be meeting to discuss this and it’s the same thing we’re discussing.”
Stephanie Whittaker was the next to contribute, she said: “Our meeting is next and we’re leading the next meeting so we’ll show them by example how it should be done.”

Simon Noble asked whether there was any discussion beforehand about what the agenda should be.

“No,” replied Tommy.

Simon Noble then proposed that the three chairs of the Community Councils should have a discussion about what the agenda should be and it should be items of common interest.

There was then some more discussion before Steph said; “I’d expected us to talk about the Common Good.”

Tommy then said, “That never came up.”

Steph continued:” If we’re going to talk about the Common Good it should be a big meeting, everyone and a chance for the public to come as well.”

Presentation to Jeanne at the Courthouse Saturday

Some pictures now on the River CC flickr pages.

Video: Celebrating Jeanne Tolmie's 34 years as Chair of River Community Council

Tommy opens, Margaret starts 1.19, Fergus 5.58, Jeanne 9.32, Laurie 16.31

Jeanne's 34 years at the helm of River CC

A fantastic couple of hours up in the Courthouse chamber today as River Community Council members past and present plus our four Highland Council members and Fergus Ewing MSP celebrated 34 years of service to the Community by Jeanne Tolmie. More pictures and hopefully a video later.

Plus ça change...

Nairn River CC correspondence from yesteryear now on Flickr

Valentine's Day Agenda

More here on the River CC site.

River CC online

Nairn River Community Council have published minutes from Tuesday night's meeting on their web address at nairnrivercc.org. Quite a lot of interesting information on there for Gurnites to browse.

Cool response for Rosemary's suggestive letter

West Community Council chair Rosemary Young had written to River and Suburban CC calling for a working group or subcommittee to discuss planning matters. Her three page letter which outlines how West CC view certain recent difficulties over planning matters can be seen here.

This initiative received a very cool response from the River members however and this observer detects that perhaps the “cross-border” interventions from West which recently took a different view from River over the Bus Station and Braeval applications. Jimmy Ferguson and Brian Stewart were in the Community Centre last night (Tuesday) to support Rosemary’s letter and reply to any points raised by River members but they had a hard time of it.

River member Andrew Purkis said: “I’m not particularly in favour of this. I do think there is merit in it but we do have organised bodies of community councillors already. Where there are areas where there are developments which affect the town generally, I think those are important for the community councils to get together to discuss those issues.I don’t think it needs to set up another level of bureaucracy. I would trust our chairman, and I’m sure each community council would trust their chairman, if there was an issue which really affected the town as a whole, for those chairman to meet and see if there is any common ground and then come back to discuss and then come back to the committees.”

Jimmy Ferguson said in reply to that and other comments: The issue wasn’t so much about someone wanting to put an extension up in their back garden and that sort of stuff, that’s very local. There are some big issues around the town, like Sandown, like Nairn South, where it’s going to have a massive impact on the whole community. Individuals within each of the community councils have quite strong backgrounds or professional backgrounds and the idea behind this was just to have a get together with a few of those people to discuss what are the bigger issues around the town and try and form a consensus on what the Nairn community really feel about some of those issues.

Leslie Bolton supported Andrew’s point of view: “Why do we need another level, Mr Chairman, I agree with Andrew, we meet monthly, eleven times a year, we have four joint meetings, that’s fifteen meetings in the year and if there was some major issue that Highland Council said they were going to deal with the town centre as a whole, we could always call a special meeting to discuss that. On Nairn South we made our representations, Nairn West made different representations, on Braeval as Stephanie said, we had a view, it was criticised at the West meeting, it was criticised at the Suburban meeting. Now that’s not the way to go. We are entitled to have our opinion on anything that comes within our area. And if we say what we say then that’s it.”

Sheilea Mayer then spoke about the Lodgehill Clinic planning application and how the three Community Councils working in unison succeeding in getting an appropriate result for the residents in that area. At this point this observer spoke of how a sort of procedure has developed in the town where residents of one particular area that are faced with an inappropriate development know that they have to get support from other areas of the town and not only their own local community council. This observer believes that these campaigns when they come are best left to individuals concerned to start things off and go to the Community Councils.

Tommy Hogg perhaps summed up the current thinking of River CC when he said: “The common message just doesn’t work sometimes, what suits one community council area will not sort the other and that has been proved in the past and it’s still the same way.”

Stephanie Whittaker added to this: “I think the town will come together when it is under threat and I think it is quite obvious that everyone will work together, the other thing is there is disagreement. If you ask, I have been spending ages, wondering around town saying to people, “What do you think about the bus station?” “What do you think of the plans.” Wonderful, really great, dreadful, hate it. There is a dichotomy of opinion and there always will be. It may be that it is a difference of opinion between community councils but it may be that the people in the town are thinking different things it’s up to us to listen to what they are saying[…] People are wonderful and they will come together and I don’t think we need to push them too much outside the system that we have already."

Although there was a fairly negative reception towards Rosemary's proposal from River members they did agree to discuss it further and thought it would also be a matter for the joint community council meeting on the 31st of January.

Elected by secret ballot...

...at the River CC last night by the eight members of the Council. The new co-opted members are John Dolan, Simon Noble and Freddie Holmes. Then there were eleven...

Bill Young gathers support for Common Good proposals from River CC

West Councillor Bill Young spoke to the River CC at the meeting in the Community Centre las night (Tuesday). He reiterated the argument he presented to his West colleagues last week, which is to get the Common Good fund under local control. See here and here for further details. He said:

“This is not an attack on the Councillors, they have a very difficult job to do, but trying to square off the books for an area the size of Belgium and trying to deal with the Common Good Fund, the two are not necessarily compatible. I can see no reason why we couldn’t get it back under the local control of Nairn.”

Later as this subject was being debated Liz said: “ I was relaxed about how the Common Good was being managed but now you’ve got a Council that is no longer run by the members it is a political council and the point that I’m trying to make here is that there’s everybody chasing budgets and it’s not going to be people aligned to areas so much. It’s going to be people aligned to political groups. I’m a political councillor but I’m just concerned that will there be the protection of the areas within the political structures[…]We’ve always been comfortable that all councillors looked after their own areas but now it is a different ball game.”

Graham Marsden said he thought Bill was right and there was an opportunity to look again and see if there are other options.

The River Councillors seemed very supportive of Billy Young’s presentation and Tommy Hogg said he wanted the matter raised at the joint Community Council meeting that will be hosted on the 31^st in the Academy by Suburban CC.
This observer wonders if Oor Graham will now also call for no sale of any Sandown land until the Common Good is back in Nairn control? Or will it simply be platitudes all the way to the ballot box?

Links School building worries return

Liz revealed to the River CC meeting earlier tonight (Tuesday) that the Health Service had indicated to Highland Council that they will be terminating their lease of the Links Clinic from the 31st of March. The struggle will now be on to find new tenants for the building and fears were expressed that the building may be sold off by the Council and knocked down to allow development. Tommy Hogg said:
"That place is close to the heart of the Community and it is a big issue."

Liz said she had several representations from clients of the services at the Links Clinic. The services provided will now be moved up to the Hospital. Oor Graham indicated that he had previously had talks with COVASS and they had shown an interest in the building and it was now his intention to go and have a chat with them. It was pointed out by Liz that COVASS's funding from Highland Council was now in jeopardy however. This was an issue we reported on in the Gurn recently.

Once again the future of a Fishertown landmark and a valuable piece of heritage is facing an uncertain future. Anyone out there need a suite of offices and meeting rooms? Please contact Highland Council if you do.

Flickr message for a Community Councillor?

Cllr Andrew Purkis, a new member of the River CC's team this time round after the nominations was quoted extensively recently in the Nairnshire Telegraph as regards to a list of improvements he wishes to see in the Fishertown. He said:

"I just feel a bit of community spirit and a little bit of tender care would give an extra boost to the area. We need people to spend money in this area to create jobs. And therefore, we need all the assets in the area to be in as good a condition as we can get them."

Could it be that not everyone agrees with Andrew's vision of how the Fishertown might be improved however? An interesting comment appears below this picture posted on Flickr.

River CC spreads the net

The Gurn understands from sources close to River Community Council that four citizens have applied to become "co-opted" councillors on the watchdog organisation. The applications are from residents in the Broadhill, Boathpark, the Lochloy and the Mill Road areas. Our sources tell us that River CC are keen to be seen by some as not simply a "Fishertown" operation and are out to obtain representation for the areas in their patch that have up to now not had members on the Council. One Fishertown rep on the Council last time, John Dolan, did not stand for election this time round although Andrew Purkis (also a Fishertown resident) was elected so four members are presently from the Fishertown - that's 50% of the total. With four more members however the Fishertown representation will be down to 33% of the total.

All Change at River CC

Jeanne Tolmie bowed out after almost 35 years as Chair of River CC tonight. She heads for the back benches. Tommy Hogg is the newcomer in the hot seat. Stephanie Whittaker is the new Secretary and Ian Gordon was returned as Treasurer.

River & West CCs at planning loggerheads again

River and West already take opposing views on the bus station proposal being for and against respectively. Now a smaller planning application in the River CC area has the two watchdog groups coming down again on separate sides of the planning fence but with River against and West for. The application for the extension to the lounge of the Braeval can be seen on this page here (click the documents tab). Click the Consultation doc dated 24th of October for the River CC response and the public comment dated 14th of November for the West letter of support for the application.

Once again River are the statutory consultee with West commenting from over the border so to speak.

River CC back tweaked bus station design (in principle)

Strong support this evening at the River Community Council meeting for the latest design from the developer's representative. There were some reservations concerning colours etc but mindful that there could be more "tweaks" in the pipeline yet after further discussions between the developer and the Highland Council, River CC were minded to back the development in principle. The vote was unanimous. (The artist's impression above will enlarge)

River CC continues campaigning on sewage issues

Regular students of River Community Council affairs will know that over the 30 year plus history of that organisation they haven’t been shy in fighting for better sewage treatment facilities in the town and stuck to their guns often in the face of fierce argument from former Councillor Nigel Graham and the late Bob Farrow. They continue in the new millennium to demand that Nairn’s sewage infrastructure is kept up to date. On Tuesday night after their meeting with the Bus Station developer’s rep they discussed a number of matters including the continuing discharges, in periods of heavy rain, from the inspection covers on either side of the Sewage Bridge, the outfall pipe below the Maggot flats and the inspection chamber at the bottom of Brocher’s Brae. River’s strategy is to write to Scottish Water, SEPA and Highland Council to ensure that the full nature and extent of the problems are revealed and also to discover if there are plans to fix these ongoing issues and to ensure that the authorities are satisfied that there is no risk to human health given the constant discharges at times of heavy precipitation.

River’s campaign received support from Brian Stewart at the West CC last night. He was concerned that the town’s sewage infrastructure would not be able to cope with any more housing developments. Brian stated: "I'm raising specifically that current and recent evidence confirms beyond doubt that there are existing infrastructure problems with drainage, waste water and sewage capacity in Nairn and that is without any of the new buildings that are planned for Nairn South or anywhere else."

"The gate is open and we should go through that gate"

Thoughts on the Bus Station Plan from the River CC meeting.

As previously mentioned there were a lot of opinions expressed at the River CC meeting on Tuesday night, here’s some further notes from the discussions.

Tommy Hogg started the ball rolling by running through the display of the plans showing elevations etc. He backed the project but with some reservation over the parking situation. Cllr Iain Gordon was the next to speak and he agreed with Tommy and stated on the parking issue: “If that could be addressed in some way then I see no problem, it would certainly tidy up that whole site which has been a carbuncle really.

The C word upset the Chair, Jeanne Tolmie, and she intervened here,”I would rather you not used that word,’ she said. ‘I don’t think Nairn has any Carbuncles.”

Cllr John Dolan then spoke, he had mixed feelings over the project. He commented: “We’ve waited a long time for something to happen, then the worry is that do we just accept it? Is something better than nothing?

Stephanie Whittaker was the next member of the Council to speak and she thought that although four stories was high: “I think we should go for it, because it would improve the area tremendously, but I still do have concerns about parking.”

Mike Henderson spoke next in an historical context. “If I cast my mind back to before my time in Nairn, the Nairn District Council knocked planning permission back on this as a retail store because it is on the wrong side of the road.” Others at the meeting were able to recall that too.

Rosemary Young (member of West CC) got her turn next as the debate moved to the public benches. She was concerned about the height and the visual aspect and asked detailed questions about the height in comparison to the police station. Sandra Dunbar was the then spoke and she was pretty forthright in her views, she asked about the listed building status of the old stables at the rear of the site and then said of the application: “It’s ridiculously soulless looking piece of architecture here, and you’ve got those listed buildings at the back, and you’ve got the lovely gardens at Viewfield and everything else and you are allowing something so bland and characterless.”

This observer then spoke and raised some points, mainly to the effect that should the Community Council and others misjudge the situation and object then there could be a public reaction against the decision which would isolate them for further issues concerning the town centre in the future. The real battle might come one day if something appalling was proposed across the other side of the A96 from the modern buildings. If the building in this application is an ugly one then so is the Community Centre but if the Upland flats and shops get the go ahead there will be no 2 million debt to the Nairnshire Common Good purse like there is with the Community Centre. I urged caution to anyone considering a strong objection and suggested compromise was a better route.

Tommy agreed with that and said: “I think this could be the beginning, the gate is open and we should go through that gate.”

It then fell to West’s Cllr and leading luminary in NICE, Brian Stewart, to speak. He began referring to recent press coverage: “I ought perhaps to say to start with that I’m not actually against this development. I think it would be unwise to object to this. My view is that redevelopment is desirable and I think probably that most of us agree on that. My way is that we shouldn’t go for anything at any price, that we should do what we can to feed in sensible and constructive thoughts on possible changes. Whether it is to design, height, parking or layout – to actually make this as close as possible to what people want rather than what the developer imposes. I also think that the mix of retail and housing makes a degree of sense.”

Brian then referred to those that wanted to see public buildings on this side of the A96 but he felt that developers wouldn’t build public buildings and there had to be homes in order to underwrite the cost of the development. He continued with his concerns about the design, admitting it was a matter of taste he continued: “Which ever way you look at it, it is a large rectangular block. A lot of people, and I’ve observed a lot of public comment, a lot people think it is not actually a very clever design, it is cheap, simple, boring and unimaginative. It doesn’t so much enhance Viewfield as block it from view. And I personally tend to agree with those that think that a 4-storey building is too high.”

Brian then outlined his concerns for the retail element which he said had been described as a super-market, a mini-supermarket or a convenience store. He wondered if there was actually enough space for anything more than a token. He referred to the shops at the Harbour with accommodation above them where, historically, some shops had struggled. He also had concerns about parking and access. Brian wasn’t finished yet however:

“There is another more general point which several people have comment online, which is, I quote from someone who said it better than me: If Nairn was a major city I could maybe understand the need to build residential housing alongside a major road and a fire station with the added noise of a shop unit – this area is already busy with trade to the takeaway, buses and a general car-park. The comment is, that in fact, it is not the most obvious and agreeable place to live. Next to the fire station is a further disturbance so I would say, simply that, by all means build something to replace what is there but it is just as easy to build something that looks good. So I think we ought to work as hard as we can to feed in constructive thoughts on how to make the building more viable, more attractive, more valuable to the developer himself and more acceptable

That’s a lot of the important points that were discussed Gurnites. West CC are discussing it too next week and River CC are now actively seeking a meeting with the developer to discuss some of the concerns and comments made.

Cautious River CC to forward comments and criticisms of Bus Station proposals to the planners

There was a wide range of opinion expressed over at a well attended meeting in the Community Centre this evening but the general feeling seemed to be that there was a willingness to see the development go ahead albeit it with differing degrees of opinion ranging from praising the plan as it is to a demand for a totally different design. River CC are to articulate the major worries expressed to the planners and also to seek a meeting with the developer or their agents to discuss the application. Appearance, parking and height were mentioned by those present. More later from the Gurn when time permits.