On 18th December a planning application (see here) was submitted to Highland Council on behalf of Akre Ltd for retrospective planning permission for works they had undertaken relating to the Far Ralia hill road, confirmation that the law had been flouted as I claimed last June (see here). The application form suggests the works started…
Author: Nick Kempe
This post takes another look (see here) and (here) at the planning application to build an enormous pump storage hydro scheme between Loch Leambhain, facing Ben Alder, and Lochan na H-Earba. The Scottish Government’s unaccountable Energy Consents Unit Generally it is harder to find documents relating to planning application on the Energy Consents Unit (ECU)…
GB TTIt is over three years since parkwatch published a letter from Alistair Bell in Canada about HIE’s corporate gaslighting at Cairn Gorm and why people had allowed downhill skiing there to die (see here). There have of course been several campaigns against HIE before, successful in the case of the opposition to extend downhill…
On 6th March “Lomond Banks”, the brand name Flamingo Land uses at Balloch, issued a news release (copy here) announcing it had finalised a Section 48 agreement [under the Roads (Scotland) Act 1984] with Transport Scotland under which it would pay for an upgrade to the Stoneymollan roundabout on the A82 should its planning application be…
I was pleased to have this letter, full text below, published in the Herald on Tuesday. I hope it speaks for itself: “Your front page report on Saturday (Rural communities ‘at risk’ in phone network switch 13th April see here) shows the UK Government’s approach to telecommunications provision in rural areas, a Westminster responsibility, is…
I am very grateful to all the people who have promoted my post on Sunday (see here) about Scottish Forestry and the tree planting disaster at Kinrara and my apologies that the parkswatch website then crashed. This does not appear to have been due to a cyber attack by defenders of the forestry grants system or…
In mid-February (see here) I described how many of the trees planted by BrewDog, as part of the Phase I creation of its Lost Forest, had died and how they appeared to be investing little, if any, of their own money in the whole disastrous project. A week after the post I received a response…
Question: how does France (along with many other European countries) manage to have so much more woodland than Scotland and “do” forestry without fencing and planting? Answer: they control grazing by large herbivores, whether livestock or deer, using completely different legal mechanisms than exist in Scotland The fundamental failing with the legislative proposals in the…
On Friday Planning Democracy published a post (see here) on whether National Planning Framework 4 had made any difference to the degree of protection that is given to nature under Scotland’s planning system as it was supposed to do. This followed an event at the Scottish Parliament, sponsored by Green MSP Ariane Burgess, and the…
On Thursday the Wildlife Management and Muirburn Bill (WMMB) (see here for text) was passed by the Scottish Parliament. Judging from the responses of some of the main proponents and opponents of the Bill one could be fooled into thinking will usher in major changes to how grouse moors are managed. On the one hand…
In mid-February a small part of tailings stack 2 had been covered in matting. An FOI response from SEPA revealed that the LLTNPA had in December required the whole of the stack to be covered by 13th February to stop sediment entering the river system.(My apologies for lack of formatting etc in this post. It’s…
Never, when writing my post HIE’s crumbling empire on Wednesday (see here), did I guess that Cairngorm Mountain Scotland Ltd (CMSL) would have confirmed my analysis within 24 hours with this admission that the one ski resort in Scotland with natural snow, high in the Ptarmigan bowl, was inaccessible due to the lack of uplift….
Following the post from Lynne Somerville of the Balloch and Haldane Community Council about the proposed Vale of Leven windfarm in December (see here), I am very pleased to be able to report that Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) staff recommended (see here) to their Planning Committee on Monday that they should…
The funicular, HIE’s crumbling empire at Cairn Gorm and the need to reform Scotland’s National Parks
The current position ” Risks associated with reinstatement of the Cairngorm funicular railway were addressed through robust internal and external governance and project management” (HIE Annual Report 2022-23 as laid before the Scottish Government in October). There was no public news release but last week Highlands and Islands Enterprise let it be known through the…
On 24th November Pitcher Partners, a company based in Western Australia, were appointed administrators for Scotgold Resources and its subsidiaries which operate in Scotland, SGZ Cononish, which operates the Cononish goldmine and its exploratory company SGZ Grampian. Two weeks ago a reader pointed me to information about two meetings Pitcher Partners held with creditors of…
It is over 18 months since I explained why the Scottish Government needed to review how Scotland’s two existing National Parks have done before creating a new one (see here). Instead of doing that the Scottish Government has been pressing ahead with the creation of a new National Park but using a new process to…
On 5th February a planning application was published on Highland Council Planning portal to erect a 27.5m high telecommunications mast along with 2 x 15m wind turbines and 36 solar panels in the heart of BrewDog’s Lost Forest (see here). While the application states “the proposed site is located towards the foot of Creag Shollier,…
How many of the trees planted at Kinrara last year have survived? After my posts in the autumn about the destruction being caused by BrewDog’s tree planting at Kinrara and how it has been releasing carbon into the atmosphere (see here) and (here), I heard through a third party that someone with professional expertise thought…
Ten days ago tree nurseries were in the news (see here) when Christie’s of Fochabers were quoted as claiming “We will have to burn millions of trees after cuts” as a result of the Scottish Government deciding to cut funding for tree planting by 44% to £45.4m next year. The BBC quoted Mr Christie, the…
Following Peter Page’s post on 18th January (see here) showing the consequences of the failure to provide basic visitor infrastructure at Rowardennan below Ben Lomond , on 6th February the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) published a notice on the Public Contracts Scotland portal (see here). This showed the LLTNPA had awarded…
On 25th January it was a year and a day since the UK Department for Transport had declared the funicular safe to re-open and exactly five calendar months since the funicular was suddenly closed for safety reasons and to attend to ‘snagging work’. After announcing several dates by when it expected the funicular to reopen…
While staying in Newtonmore over New Year I heard that Storm Gerrit, which had hit Scotland on Boxing Day, had caused some spectacular damage in the lower parts of Glen Feshie. On my last day I went to have a look, little expecting that I would also get a post on sheep and woodland out…
There appears to have been no public news about what has been happening at the Cononish goldmine since its owner, Scotgold Resources, went into administration on 24th November. Following my post of 18th December (see here), which described some of the pollutions incidents that had taken place earlier this year and my efforts to bring…
Deer fencing and stock fencing generally serve very different purposes, the former is used to keep deer out, the latter to keep sheep and cattle in. While I have covered the disastrous consequences of deer fencing quite often on parkswatch, most recently in relation to the case of BrewDog’s Lost Forest and its impact on…
After a number of FOI requests, Rob Edwards revealed in an excellent article in the Ferret on 18th January (see here) that officials at Historic and Environment Scotland (HES) had been considering trying to close the Radical Rd below Salisbury Crags in Edinburgh permanently. While shocking, that was hardly surprising. Having fenced off access for…