Following my post on the proposed loch achray campsite, which received some well-informed comments from readers, further documents relating to the application have been uploaded to the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority Planning portal (see here). The papers for the December LLTNPA Board Meeting confirm that Loch Achray is the ONLY “new” campsite…
Tag: LLTNPA
Yesterday the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority planning committee considered a planning application from David McCowan, an elected Board Member and member of the Planning Committee (see here). David McCowan represents the people of Balloch and West Loch Lomond and the planning application was to build a three storey extension onto the Woodbank…
Since my post in June (see here) on Forest Enterprise’s “upgrade” of the Coilessan Glen forest track, I have been trying to get to the root of what has gone wrong. First I established that no planning application or prior notification had been received by the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority, then I…
On Friday I went to the first of the Flamingo Land consultation events at Lomond Shores in Balloch. I was not sure what to expect partly because the proposals have been developed in secret (see here) but also because – like many people I suspect – I don’t think like a developer. The display of…
The failures in the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park’s consultation system A couple of weeks ago, at the Scottish Wild Group AGM, I was told that a planning application had been submitted back in August for the new proposal for waste storage waste from the Cononish Gold Mine (see here). The formal consultation period…
In order to ban camping and get the camping byelaws approved, the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority misrepresented and grossly exaggerated the impacts campers were having on the loch shores. They did this by promulgating multiple images of irresponsible campers while ignoring their own data and misusing police data which put the problems…
While I would love our National Parks to be litter free, when litter is getting worse everywhere in Scotland (see here), any attempt to reduce litter which does not take account of the wider context is almost certainly doomed to failure. Yet that is what the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority did…
On 27th October, after six months of silence, agents for Flamingo Land lodged a pre-planning application consultation strategy with the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority. Anyone who follows Scottish Government planning policy knows that one of the big ideas and big pushes is towards “front loading” the planning system, with a shift to…
In September the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority submitted a planning application (see here) to itself as planning authority for a new campsite on the south shore of Loch Achray on Forest Drive in the Trossachs. There is widespread agreement that new campsites with basic facilities are needed in the National Park. So…
Gleann Casaig runs from the east shore of the Glen Finglas Reservoir, north of Brig O’Turk, up to the ridge between Ben Ledi and Ben Vane in the Trossachs. The glen forms part of the Woodland Trust’s Glen Finglas estate and part of the Great Trossachs Forest project which in 2015 was designated as Scotland’s…
I spent Saturday evening, along with a few hundred others at a sold out event in the Glasgow Concert Hall, listening to George Monbiot talk about his new book “Out of the Wreckage”. George’s message was that contrary to neo-liberal ideology, the vast majority of people are altruistic and will contribute to the wider good…
Last Saturday, sitting in a hut in the Snowdonia National Park, I came across a Guardian travel supplement “Adventures in Wild Britain” which featured ten places to experience Britain’s most stunning wildlife. One of the places was Glen Falloch at the head of Loch Lomond (see here). Regular readers and anyone who hillwalks there,…
Following my post about how the planning documentation for the Ledard farm campsite has been altered (see here), I have been trying to obtain final confirmation from the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority of the status of the new track being used to construct the Hydro Scheme (see here). On 28th September a…
Following my post (see here) on why people should be sceptical about the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority Board paper which claimed the camping permit system had been successful, I have been passed information from two readers about complaints submitted to the LLTNPA. Both concern Forest Drive and accord with what I saw…
Looking at the papers for the Cairngorms National Park Board meeting which took place last Friday (see here), I was struck by the significant differences between the way it and the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority operate. While many (mostly retiring?) members of the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority have…
The carpark for Ben Venue, which was featured in the Stirling Observer (see here), had been cleared up by the time I visited it 8 days ago. I had a discussion with Fergus Wood, the Board Member who own Ledard Farm afterwards and he said the layby had never been blocked to hillwalkers. While that…
I was reminded a couple of weeks ago, in SNH’s regular e-newsletter “Scotland’s Nature”(see here), that there are some great people working for the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Ranger service . What better for a group of refugees without money and after all they have been through to get out and experience the…
On Friday to mark the end of the camping byelaws – you were a criminal if you pitched your tent without a permit on Saturday but from past midnight could camp in the same place scot free – Phoebe Smith has a piece on Radio 4’s “You and Yours” http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b095ptx2. (It runs from 28 mins…
The Your Park paper update paper to the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority Board on 18th September (see here) contained a very short section of enforcement of the camping byelaws. While the LLTNPA has reported that 7 cases have been reported to the Procurator Fiscal since the byelaws came into effect, what they…
The debate about visitor numbers, which started this summer with reports of visitors “swamping” Skye and the North West Coast, has moved to the Outer Hebrides and the current focus is on “motorhomes”. However, unlike in the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park where the numbers of visitors are treated as a problem, in the…
Retiring Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority Board Member and former SNP councillor Fergus Wood was featured in the Stirling Observer last week due to his alleged failure to abide by planning conditions set by the National Park Authority for the hydro scheme at Ledard Farm which he is reported as describing in the…
The Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Board Meeting on Monday (see here for papers) was far more open than meetings in the past but showed the Board still has a considerable way to go. The fundamental issue is that most Board Members appear to have little idea of why they are there. It was…
In the paper on the camping byelaws presented at the June LLTNPA Board Meeting, it was reported that: “86% of people said that they would be quite likely or very likely to recommend staying over in a camping/motorhome permit area” and “82% of people found it easy or very easy to find their permit area”….
An extraordinary discussion took place at the end of the June Board meeting of the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority in which Councillor James Robb, one of several councillors who will be leaving the Board this Autumn (see here), proposed that the number of Board Members should be cut. The reason for the…
Anyone who tries to understand human affairs from a global perspective will have probably greeted last week’s announcement that a poll of readers of the Rough Guides had found Scotland to be the most beautiful country in the world with a deep shrug. It is of course just a piece of marketing based on…