A month after the Flamingo Land Planning Application was withdrawn on 17th September (see here), I submitted an information request to clarify further the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority Board’s involvement in the whole process. EIR 2019-022 Response arrived a couple of weeks ago. It provides several insights into the Flamingo Land Planning…
Tag: flamingo land
Today Scottish Enterprise and Flamingo Land issued a joint news release (see here for full text) announcing they had withdrawn their planning application for “Lomond Banks” at Balloch, which was due to be considered by the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority Board next week. The news release makes it clear this is only…
Last week I welcomed (see here) the recommendation by officers that the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority Board should reject the Flamingo Land planning application. I praised the fact that part of their recommendation is based on the Sandford Principle which states that where there is a conflict between the statutory objectives of…
In the first bit of really welcome news (see here) to have emerged from the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park for some time, officers have recommended that the entire Flamingo Land Planning Application is refused. This includes both the proposals for land owned by Scottish Enterprise and the National Park itself on the Riverside…
Last week news of yet another proposed major development on the western shores of Loch Lomond emerged. The Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority published its response to the pre-application consultation proposals on their planning portal (see here) and this then received coverage in the Helensburgh Advertiser (see here). This post explains why the…
In the run up to the National Park’s hearing on their Planning Application on Tuesday 24th September, Flamingo Land appear to have decided to go onto the offensive. Besides their attempt to discredit West Dunbartonshire Councillors objection to the application (see here) and (here), which I will consider further below, they have been feeding more…
The first reason West Dunbartonshire Council gave for objecting to the Riverside and Woodbank House Planning application was that local Councillors regarded it as “overdevelopment and departure from the Local Development Plan”. In planning terms this is very important because Local Development Plans are meant to set a framework for what type of development takes…
The arrangements for taking the planning decision On 29th July the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority issued a brief news statement setting a date for their Board visit to the West Riverside site (Monday 24th September) and for the Board Hearing and meeting which will decide the Flamingo Land Planning Application (Tuesday 25th…
After my post on floods and flood prevention within our National Parks (see here), which included a brief postscript on Balloch in response to a reader’s comment, I have been sent more photos of flooding on the Old Luss Rd, which runs under the Woodbank House part of the proposed Flamingo Land development. The updated…
After the criticisms in my last post about the way the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority is being managed (see here), its good to be able to report that the Park’s management have got something right. At today’s Planning Committeethey are recommending that the Planning Application from the Wards Estate for a function…
The public accountability of our Public Authorities has, over the last twenty years, been reduced to a thread. Part of the reason for this is that journalists are, with a few honourable exceptions, no longer employed to report on what our Public Authorities are up to. The days of the media regularly reporting on Board…
Scottish Enterprise’s decision to make a joint planning application with Flamingo Land at Balloch, with a view to selling off the publicly owned gateway to the National Park for private profit, is looking increasingly foolhardy. First Scottish Enterprise included the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority, the body that has to decide the planning…
On Monday the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority re-advertised (see here) the Flamingo Land Planning Application and announced a new statutory 28 period for the public to respond. The reason for this is that Ian Cowan, the consultant commissioned by Ross Greer and the Greens whose work has been financed by a crowdfunding…
The 28 day statutory minimum consultation period on the revised Flamingo Land Planning Consultation ends on Monday when Green MSP, Ross Greer, is due to hand in over 52,000 objections he has helped gather to the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority. The LLTNPA, to it credit, has said that it will continue to…
[This post was corrected and updated in June 2024 after I identified a mistake about the price Scottish Enterprise had paid for the Riverside Site]. Last week I mentioned the growing media interest in the Flamingo Land proposals at Balloch and it was great to see this powerful piece from Kevin McKenna at the weekend. …
In the last couple of weeks Flamingo Land, which the multi-millionaire developer Gordon Gibb has tried unsuccessfully to rebrand as Lomond Banks, has become a national political issue. By that I don’t mean a party political issue – most politicians, both nationally and locally, are still sitting on the fence – but one which is…
Yesterday, Flamingo Land’s media consultants issued a New release on their revised Planning Application at Balloch. This received widespread media coverage and appeared designed to deceive. Most of the media did not fall for the attempt to rename the proposed development Lomond Banks and continued to refer to it as Flamingo Land. No-one, however, questioned…
Its no wonder the Loch Lomond and National Park Authority are disappointed by the collapse of the Great Scottish Swim. For the last few years they have told everyone who would listen – particularly gullible civil servants and Scottish Ministers – what a success mass commercial events events have been: Now, the Park’s most prestigious…
The papers for the next Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority Board meeting on Monday 18th March were published last week (see here). There are some good things in them, particularly the papers on “Wild Park” and a new Forest Strategy (see here), which I will consider further in due course. There are also…
At the end of November, I took a critical look at the Balloch Charrette, the community planning event that took place in 2016 (see here) AFTER the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority had already committed to Flamingo Land going ahead. Out of the event came an Action Plan (see here) complete with lead partners…
To mark Save Loch Lomond Day, which is being run by Save Loch Lomond to celebrate the number of objections to the Flamingo Land Planning Application reaching 35,000, I thought I would take a look at how boating on the loch is being commercialised. In January, the Loch Lomond and Trossachs Park Authority, which was…
There is a case for tourism development at Balloch which goes all the way back to the Clyde Valley Regional Plan in 1949. That envisaged a number of developments along the south west corner of Loch Lomond segregated by green spaces. The problem is the developments now being proposed on the south shores of Loch…
While rumours are circulating that the Flamingo Land Planning Application to develop much of Balloch may be withdrawn and replaced by a number of separate applications, officially the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority have suspended the Planning Process since August while awaiting information from the applicant (see here). That hardly tallies with the…
There have been many objections to the Flamingo Land Planning Application but very little consideration given to how it fits with the policies set out in the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority Local Development Plan (LDP). While politics are often a more important factor than plans in determining planning applications, the LDP is…
Charrette is the fashionable name given to events ostensibly designed to include and empower local communities in respect of local planning processes. The name appears designed to discourage and disempower, unless you happen to be French. Still, if well run, incomprehension can change to active participation while ideas and proposals can be produced and converted…