This Saturday Page/Park architects, who are acting on behalf of the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) and West Dunbartonshire Council (WDC), are holding a public “engagement event” at the pierhead in Balloch.  What is now described as an “Improvement Action Plan” was, back in June, called a masterplan – as I explained in recent my post on the Rescue Boat planning application which lies within the area covered by the plan (see here). This post will take a further look at why the LLTNPA are pushing this plan now and the potential implications.

Page/Park have set up a website for the consultation (see here), which contains some useful background information, and a short online survey (see here) which is open until 13th December.  While Page/Park were the architects who designed the LLTNPA‘s headquarters Balloch, which were recently subject to a major retrofit (see here), they were apparently appointed to do this work by WDC.

Background and need for the plan

The Page/Park website contains a Q and A section which explains the origins of the proposal:

This is true as far as it goes but omits to mention the review for the pierhead area should have been COMPLETED by 2021 at latest and the collaborative design was intended to maximise integration with the other developments:

Nor did the answer mention that one of the short-term actions from the charrette was to “Develop Riverside Site”.  At the time, in 2016, the LLTNPA and Scottish Enterprise had secretly appointed Flamingo Land as preferred developer for the Riverside Site but kept this news from the public (see here).  Unbeknown to those who participated in the charrette, therefore, the Pierhead Review  appears to have been originally intended as a means of helping to make the Flamingo Land development happen.

It is possible that the Pierhead review was then shelved because, as criticism of Flamingo Land’s proposals developed, going ahead with it would have created a forum for the opposition.  The origins of the proposed plan therefore stink and the LLTNPA, having failed to deliver on so many other actions from the charrette (see here), now needs to explain why it wishes to press ahead with this one.

The need for the LLTNPA to explain this  is reinforced by the fact that the scope of the plan, described as the “Study Area” on Page/Park’s website, excludes that part of the Pierhead earmarked for Flamingo Land’s aparthotel and leisure complex:

Why?  From a planning perspective it makes absolutely no sense to leave out this key area of land which fronts onto Drumkinnon Bay.

In my view the likely explanation is probably not that the LLTNPA doesn’t want to be seen to put barriers in the way of Flamingo Land appealing their decision to refuse planning permission.  Developers have three months to appeal and that period will be up mid-December so the LLTNPA could have easily waited to see what happened.   Rather, I think its because when it comes to “improvements” the LLTNPA is focussed on the land they control and manage to the exclusion of almost everything else:

Park/Page’s Q and A may therefore be correct when it says:

The wording in these answers is, however, revealing.  Note how the first answer describes the Improvement Action Plan as being “for Balloch”, when it is actually just for the land the LLTNPA and WDC own and manage at the Pierhead. The two public authorities are equating their interests to those of the village of Balloch when they are not the same!

And if the Improvement Action Plan is seeking “to fully integrate” the Rescue Boat site, why doesn’t it “fully integrate” the land owned by Scottish Enterprise fronting Drumkinnon Bay?

 

Another fake consultation

With the scope of the improvement plan limited to the areas where the LLTNPA and WDC have a direct interest, it is inconceivable that they don’t already have ideas of what they want to do with it. Indeed, as I argued in my post on the Rescue Boat planning application, LLTNPA staff could not have asked their Board to approve an indicative budget of £2,400,000 unless they had a reasonably clear idea of what they wanted to do.

There is, however,  absolutely NO mention of the LLTNPA and WDC’s ideas and intentions in the “consultation” documents.  Instead, the public are being asked a few vague questions the answers to which the LLTNPA will be able to interpret any way they choose.  A real consultation would have come with a non-exhaustive list of potential options for using the land – including the future of the Maid of the Loch, the use of the Duncan Mills slipway, the potential for a watersports centre (see here) etc – but there is no mention of any of that.  At present therefore the evidence suggests the LLTNPA and WDC’s real intention is another very expensive car park upgrade as has happened at Tarbet (see here).

It is worth noting here that before the public consultation event Page/Park was asked to organise a two and a half hour private workshop with selected stakeholders on 11th November to which, I understand, the locally elected member of the LLTNPA Board for Balloch was not invited.  I have submitted an FOI request to try and find out what is really going on.

While the LLTNPA has advertised the consultation event on social media, both the Balloch and Haldane Community Council (BHCC) and Save Loch Lomond only appear to have been informed about the event recently and its only appeared on their FB pages this week.  With the consultation finishing in December the BHCC has been given no time to arrange their own consultation so that they can represent local opinion. That is wrong.

The BHCC, through the Lomond South Community Development Trust, has also I understand registered an interest in taking over the assets at the pierhead.  As the key stakeholder they should have been consulted about the need for a plan for the pierhead in the first place and then its scope.  Instead, the LLTNPA appears to be trying to rush through a plan for the pierhead BEFORE the Community Development Trust is fully up and running, putting its interests before those of the local community.

A Local Place Plan for Balloch and outdoor recreation plan should come first

The suggestion in the answer above there is nothing wrong in having two separate plans, one led by the LLTNPA and one led by the local community is totally wrong.  Whatever happens at the pierhead affects the rest of Balloch, particularly as a large part of the area is used for car parking.  Whatever decisions are made about those car parks, whether they are expanded, reduced or retain their current capacity, has  consequences for traffic and parking in the rest of the village.

The interconnectedness of parking capacity and traffic was in fact recognised in the charrette and WDC was meant to lead on the development of a “parking strategy” for the village:

 

WDC never referred to any parking strategy for Balloch in their response to the Flamingo Land Planning Application and failed to acknowledge or act on local concerns of local people about the traffic implications for the village.  That was despite the  local MSP, Jackie Baillie, conducting a survey which found that traffic and parking were the number one concern local residents had about the Flamingo Land application.

There would likely to be similar concerns about the Pierhead.  However, without any indication of  what the LLTNPA’s  and WDC’s intentions are for the Pierhead and whether WDC’s overall goal remains “maximising parking availability” (see here), there is nothing for local people to go on. All that the “consultation” survey asks is whether people have experienced problems with traffic and parking.

Read through the spin and the jargon in the explanatory materials for the consultation and it becomes even clearer the plan is really all about the parking arrangements on the land owned and managed by WDC and LLTNPA

Improving the “functionality” of the pierhead basically means how people get there; improving the “appearance” is code for landscaping the car parks; and the reference to the support of the landowners tells you this is something the LLTNPA and WDC want.  So why not just say so?

The answer I believe is that if the LLTNPA and WDC did so openly the need to develop a Local Place Plan for the whole of Balloch first would be obvious.

Assuming the Flamingo Land development doesn’t go ahead, there are two main sources of demand for parking at the Pierhead.   The first is the Maid of the Loch which has always seen parking as being essential to attract visitors.  In my view there are alternatives, such as electric transit vehicles connecting the pierhead area to the railway station and the Lomond Shores car parks, but that requires a wider plan for the whole village.

The second main driver of demand is the Duncan Mills slipway which is now the ONLY public launching point for boats onto Loch Lomond since LLTNPA senior management closed Milarrochy Bay without any consultation six years ago (see here).  Two boat launching were never enough but instead of dispersing demand by creating more public slipways, the LLTNPA have concentrated it in one place.  That has created problems for boaters, local residents and other visitors to Balloch.  On popular days at the beginning and end of the main boating season there is simply not enough space for all the vehicles and trailers to park at the pierhead. Botched visitor management has created chaos.

I understand there is now talk of creating provisions to force people who need to park their cars and trailers after launchng their boats to do so in the overflow car park on the far side of Drumkinnon Woods. That could increase the congestion further and have knock-on impacts for Lomond Shores.  It will also create further inconvenience for the public who want to launch their boats.

If the LLTNPA really wants to solve the problems it has caused by forcing lots of cars and boat trailers into one place, it needs far more than a plan for the pierhead or indeed for the whole of Balloch.  It needs to revive the former Outdoor Recreation Plan which it scrapped (see here) and build into that proper provision for boat launching.

 

Undermining the local community

In the Q and A above, it is claimed that the Local Place Plan ” is a community led plan” and that “The Community Council has not yet started to prepare its local plan plan” – as if the entire responsibility for Balloch not having a Local Plan Plan lay with the local community,

The truth is that while the LLTNPA was helping local communities all over the rest of the National Park to prepare local place plans (see above) Balloch, which is the largest settlement in the National Park, was  left out. That was not an accident.  The LLTNPA’s  senior management did not want t do anything that might have got in the way of the Flamingo Land application going ahead or to assist the local community in Balloch to develop an alternative.

The LLTNPA owes it now to Balloch to make up for that but, having provided resources to other local communities to develop their local place plans, the LLTNPA now appear to be saying they don’t have the resources available to help Balloch!   That is complete poppycock.  The LLTNPA, if it so wished, could divert all the resources its devoting to the Pierhead Plan and the £2.4m it has identified for implementing that to the Community Development Trust. Instead of helping develop a local place plan before the pierhead plan the LLTNPA has chosen to  put its own interests first and before those of the local community.

No surprise there!  This provides another example of why the Scottish Government should create no new National Parks in Scotland until it has commissioned an independent review of the LLTNPA and its many failures.

The BHCC and Community Development Trust meantime needs to respond to the challenge, call a public meeting to discuss the needs and idea for the whole of Balloch and demand that the development of the Pierhead Improvement Action Plan is put on hold until a Local Place Plan and Outdoor Recreation Plan which address the wider issues have been agreed.