Yesterday the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority planning committee considered a planning application from David McCowan, an elected Board Member and member of the Planning Committee (see here). David McCowan represents the people of Balloch and West Loch Lomond and the planning application was to build a three storey extension onto the Woodbank…
Month: November 2017
Following my post on the new and “upgraded” hill track in Glen Banchor (see here), the Cairngorms National Park Authority has informed Dave Morris and myself that they will fully investigate what has happened and feed back to us what action they can take. This is most welcome. I also reported to them that works…
On Friday staff from Cairngorm Mountain entered the Scottish Ski Club Hut on Cairngorm and removed the Winter Highland Webcam. I have checked and there is proof of this from several sources including a telephone message that Janet Janssen, Manager of Cairngorm Mountain, left on the Winter Highland answerphone. Staff from Natural Retreats had not…
Since my post in June (see here) on Forest Enterprise’s “upgrade” of the Coilessan Glen forest track, I have been trying to get to the root of what has gone wrong. First I established that no planning application or prior notification had been received by the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority, then I…
Earlier this year, the owner of the Pitmain estate, who appears to be Abdul Majid Jafar, bought the Glen Banchor and Strone Estate behind Newtonmore. I say “appears” because the information on Pitmain Estate Ltd at Companies House fails to declare who has significant control over the company. While Abdul Majid Jafar resigned as a Director…
On Friday I went to the first of the Flamingo Land consultation events at Lomond Shores in Balloch. I was not sure what to expect partly because the proposals have been developed in secret (see here) but also because – like many people I suspect – I don’t think like a developer. The display of…
The failures in the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park’s consultation system A couple of weeks ago, at the Scottish Wild Group AGM, I was told that a planning application had been submitted back in August for the new proposal for waste storage waste from the Cononish Gold Mine (see here). The formal consultation period…
A few weeks ago I learned that someone had nominated me for the TGO Readers’ Award under the category Campaign or Campaigner of the year. I am really grateful that someone appreciated parkswatchscotland sufficiently to nominate me for this. I also think its great that TGO values campaigning and through the awards and its…
A strange thing happened on the 1st November, Natural Retreats UK changed its name to the UK Great Travel Company Ltd. This took place in the middle of a massive row which has erupted over a “Natural Retreats” planning application in the Yorkshire Dales. This post looks at the potential implications of both for…
In order to ban camping and get the camping byelaws approved, the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority misrepresented and grossly exaggerated the impacts campers were having on the loch shores. They did this by promulgating multiple images of irresponsible campers while ignoring their own data and misusing police data which put the problems…
Following my two posts last December about the destruction caused by the hydro scheme in Glen Bruar (see here) and (here), I took a jog up the glen on Saturday. I was prompted to do so after planning staff at the Cairngorms National Park Authority were kind enough to inform me – unprompted – that significant…
While I would love our National Parks to be litter free, when litter is getting worse everywhere in Scotland (see here), any attempt to reduce litter which does not take account of the wider context is almost certainly doomed to failure. Yet that is what the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority did…
The financial position of Cairngorm Mountain Ltd Following my post on the finances at Cairngorm (see here), a Natural Retreats spokeswoman claimed to the Strathy this week that “Overall despite an operating loss the company was cash flow positive requiring no group support or bank intervention”. This is completely misleading, as the Cairngorm Mountain Ltd accounts…
On 27th October, after six months of silence, agents for Flamingo Land lodged a pre-planning application consultation strategy with the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority. Anyone who follows Scottish Government planning policy knows that one of the big ideas and big pushes is towards “front loading” the planning system, with a shift to…