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…
Category: Loch Lomond and Trossachs
This post take a look at the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA)’s handling of three recent planning applications and the anomalies therein following Nick Kempe’s post earlier in the week about Inchconnachan (see here). More on Inchconnachan island I attended the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) Planning & Access…
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…
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…
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…
Conservation and the welfare of the public: the Wallabies and Fallow Deer on the Loch Lomond islands
In December the Planning Committee of the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) unanimously approved the planning application by Mr and Mrs Young to build a luxury holiday lodge on Inchconnachan (see here for committee report). Initially the application had included a proposal, based on advice from NatureScot, to remove the wallabies from…
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…
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…
Temperatures in Scotland on Sunday reached a UK record of 19.6 degrees at Kinlochewe in Torridon. There is an excellent short blog and photos showing the impact on the Scottish Avalanche Information Service website (see here). While the temperature spike is explained by the foehn effect (see here), it still beats previous heat records in…
On 25th January, Network Rail announced it was extending the platforms on eight stations along the West Highland Line by 15m at a cost of £1.7m to allow trains to run with an extra carriage (see here). The purpose of this investment is to help meet increasing passenger demand and enable the trains to carry…
The weather was extraordinary on Ben Lomond on 7th January- blue sky and sunshine, with dry, crisp snow on the ground and fog in the valleys. As a result it was very busy, I have never seen so many people enjoying the hill at the same time – I guess that I saw / passed…
Parkswatch has already featured the Shared Rural Networks (SRN) scheme, and some instances of its potential impact (see here), (here) and (here). Some digging (mostly by others) reveals that the potential impact of the SRN scheme is much bigger and much worse that many people previously thought. To recap, the Shared Rural Networks (SRN) scheme is…
Soon after suggesting that sporting estates managed for grouse pose the greater threat to access rights because of their concerted attempts to make people “keep to the path” (see here), I came across this salutary reminder that some deer stalking estates are still ignoring the Scottish Outdoor Access Code (SOAC). One of the primary meanings…
Last week I went out at Balmaha, the first time for over a year, and was greeted by a new forest of tree tubes. It looks terrible, is terrible for nature and ,this post argues, it exemplifies what is wrong with the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) and its new National Park…
I had not attended a Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) board meeting in person since before the Covid lockdown but on 11th December once again took the train to Balloch. Having just written a post on The fundamentally useless National Park Authority and its useless National Park plan it was very decent…
The Balloch and Haldane Community Council, who resigned en masse after backing the Flamingo Land development, is back up and running again with new people. That is a very good thing for the local community and Parkswatch is pleased to support their work by featuring this article by Lynne Somerville, their vice-chairperson, which is also…
Restoring Scotland’s natural woodland cover and biodiversity from centuries of over grazing is an urgent and necessary step towards sustainable management and care for our hills and mountains. Woodland regeneration could, within decades, extend throughout the uplands allowing a natural woodland mosaic to develop, increasing biodiversity while protecting and enhancing the terrestrial carbon cycles. The…
The publication date of the April Monitoring report of the Cononish goldmine is given on the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA)as 26th October (see here), four days before the Planning Committee Meeting on 30th October (see here) which considered and then “noted” the “annual report” on the mine. There was absolutely no…
The Scottish Government’s consultation on Tackling the Nature Emergency (see here) closed on Thursday. It is yet another consultation that will have consumed vast amounts of time and energy but is unlikely to change much. This post considers some of the key reasons why the Scottish Government’s proposals for nature restoration won’t work. A second…
By happy timing, John Urquhart’s agenda article for the Herald on the end of funding for the A82/A83 litter bins and loos (which might be easier to read here) appeared two days before the meeting on the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) on Monday. There is nothing in the papers for…
The Scottish Government’s consultation on “Tackling the Nature Emergency: Scotland’s Strategic Framework for Biodiversity” (see here), which was launched in September and includes proposals to reform Scotland’s National Parks, closes on 14th December. To date I have only considered the Scottish Government’s undemocratic proposal to increase Ministerial control over appointments to National Park board appointments…