“The community-led Local Place Planning process for Balloch, Haldane, and Jamestown is now underway, and we want you to be part of it.  This is a chance for local residents, families, and businesses to come together and help shape how our community develops in the years ahead. Your input will cover everything from the spaces we use every day to the opportunities we want to see created.”.  (West Dunbartonshire Council see here).

Local Place Plan drop-in consultation events have been organised for this afternoon, Friday 28th November and Saturday 29th November in Balloch (see here) and an online survey is due to open on 1st December. The elephant in the room is Flamingo Land:

 

The “Lomond Banks” planning application covers most of the undeveloped land at Balloch.  Added to which Scottish Enterprise has promised to sell Flamingo Land Drumkinnon Woods, the area outlined in blue, if planning consent is granted.  If, therefore, Ivan McKee, the Scottish Government minister responsible for planning, approves the Flamingo Land planning application, there will be very little scope for the local place plan to determine anything which happens in Balloch.  If, on the other hand, Ivan McKee refuses the application this would be a massive opportunity for the local community to develop an alternative plan to Flamingo Land.

Given this fact, it is extraordinary that there is no mention of the Flamingo Land planning application on the Balloch and Haldane Local Place Plan website or in any of the information about the consultation.  That cold be explained by the consultation being partly funded by West Dunbartonshire Council, who failed to object to the Flamingo Land application, and the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA).  The latter, as I recently explained (see here and here), have been sitting on the fence since Ivan McKee decided to call in the application.

Both planning authorities, if challenged ,would probably try and justify this omission from the consultation by saying it is for for the whole of Balloch and Haldane and not just for the western side of the River Leven.  The risk, however, is that ignoring the elephant room creates confusion  about the scope of the consultation and how to respond.  Should people, when making comments, assume Flamingo Land will get the go ahead or should they not?

In my view in these circumstances local people should  take the advice published on the place plan website at face value:

“The Scottish Government says that Local Place Plans “offer the opportunity for a community-led, collaborative approach to creating great local places… effectively empowering communities to play a proactive role in defining the future of their places” (Circular 1/2022, paragraph 3).”

This advice means all parties at Balloch should start with a blank slate, ignore Flamingo Land’s proposals and come up with new proposals that are designed to benefit the local community and the wider public rather than private interests.  Doing so, more than anything else, would throw down the gauntlet to Ivan McKee.  It would also support the aspiration expressed in the November newsletter of the Loch Lomond South Community Development Trust (see here):

“As you are undoubtedly aware, to create an alternative that suits everyone, we hope to action an asset transfer of the land and buildings Lomond Banks [i.e Flamingo Land] had earmarked for development into community ownership”.

It appears the local community council and development trust have been caught in a double bind.  They want to develop an alternative to Flamingo Land but to do this required support from the LLTNPA and West Dunbartonshire Council .  It has taken them a lot of time and effort to get to the position.  However, having accepted that financial support, it is very difficult for these local community organisations to criticise either planning authority.  Hence the elephant in the room.

 

Planning democracy and Flamingo Land

By happy coincidence, Planning Democracy, the organisation campaigning for a democratic planning system in Scotland launched its new manifesto yesterday (see here).  The way the Flamingo Land planning application has been promoted and managed by the LLTNPA at Balloch (eg see here and here) provides a perfect illustration of the need for a radical overhaul of Scotland’s planning system as being called for by Planning Democracy. Their manifesto (see here) is organised into six parts: strengthening democracy, protecting nature, ending the housing crisis, protecting rights, planning for wider system change and open and honest planning.

The failure to mention the elephant in the room in the Balloch Local Place Plan consultation epitomises the lack of openness and honesty in the planning system.  The section on “strengthening democracy” is particularly relevant to the local place plan consultation which has now started at Balloch as I hope these extracts illustrate:

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Is that not the perfect description of the current situation at Balloch, Ivan McKee hiding in his office failing to reveal his hand for Balloch while the local community are sidelined from the real decision making process?

In Balloch engagement has been worse than superficial, it has been dishonest.  The LLTNPA conducted the charrette, the fancy name for the consultation  with the local community in 2016, without telling consultees that behind the scenes they had sat on the interview panel and secretly appointed Flamingo Land as preferred developer for the site (see here)? More recently, the LLTNPA conducted the Pierhead Action Plan consultation without telling anyone they had agreed with Scottish Enterprise it should be kept as a car park (see here)?  When local board member, Sid Perrie, tried to expose that the response to the LLTNPA – as I will show – was to lodge a second complaint against him with the Ethical Standards Commission.

This section of the Planning Democracy manifesto  ends with a call for a radical overhaul of not just planning, but local government:

I commend the whole manifesto, it is only 22 pages in total, and avoids most of the planning jargon used by the Scottish Government and planning authorities which is so disempowering. Were its recommendations to be implemented in my view Flamingo Land could never have happened.