On Monday 16th September, as widely reported in the media – the BBC gave it coverage on UK news – those of the board of the Loch Lomond Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA) present duly accepted the recommendations of their officers, without amendment, and rejected Flamingo Land’s planning application. This outcome was as I had…
Tag: secrecy
Following my post (see here) on how the Royal Scottish Forestry Society (RSFS) are cashing in on Cashel , Andy Wightman wrote a fine follow up piece on the Cashel estate and the post war labour government. This filled in some of the historical gaps and demonstrated how the public ownership of land was once…
The failed Cononish goldmine & the failures of the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority
This post provides a summary of some recent evidence that has emerged about the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority (LLTNPA)’s mis-management of the crisis at the mine and some related financial developments. The “regular updates” given to LLTNPA Board Members about Cononish goldmine The Chief Executive’s report to the LLTNPA Board Meeting…
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…
Ostensibly the law governing public authorities in Scotland requires them to operate in an open and transparent manner. The Freedom of Information Act required public authorities to produce publication schemes, setting out what information they publish as a a matter of course (the idea being to reduce the need for formal requests for information), while…
NatureScot’s consultation on National Parks closes today. In my view the most important section of the online survey (see here) is about the powers and functions of National Parks (questions 13-16). Get this right and there would be no need to resort to “green” finance as the means to address the undoubted problems in our…
Walking back down the road in upper Glen Falloch in September the difference in vegetation between the east and west banks of the River Falloch was striking. On the right of the photo you can see lots of natural regeneration, whereas on the left there is none. The Roy Map 1747-52 (see here) shows the…
As I mentioned in my recent post on greenwashing (see here), James Stuart, the soon to depart convener of the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority, was in July appointed by UK Government Ministers to the Lakes District National Park Authority. On the LDNPA website (see here) Board Members are portrayed as “the voice…
The news of a poisoned Golden Eagle being found next to a poisoned Mountain Hare on Invercauld Estate (see here) led me to reflect on the afternoon I found a trapped gull on that estate in June 2016. While this received publicity at the time, some of it excellent, (see here), I have never told my…
On Thursday the Scottish Parliament’s Public Audit and Post-Legislative Scrutiny Committee – a mouthful of a name! – questioned Audit Scotland about their report (see here) on “Highland and Islands Enterprise: management of Cairn Gorm Mountain and funicular railway” which they published in June. The session, which lasted just over an hour, can be viewed…
In December the LINK hill tracks group revealed that the owner of the Glen Clova estate, Mr Hugh Niven, has appealed to the Scottish Government against the enforcement notice which the Cairngorms National Park Authority issued against the new hill road by the Clova hotel (see here) and (here): “It is deeply frustrating that a…
Background On the 27 January 2019 I applied to Highlands and Islands Enterprise for the two “ADAC Structures” Inspection reports which resulted in the Funicular Railway being closed. The redacted reports were finally released on Friday 11th October after a request to the Scottish Information Commissioner. This post will look at the Funicular Railway Inspection…
Following my two posts on the proposed Mountain Coaster (see here) and (here) , I will take a look at the financial and environmental aspects of the proposed new uplift at Cairngorm as outlined in the SE Group report of November 2018 (see here). I will use the same kind of format as the Mountain Coaster…
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…
[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. …
Knowledge and the abuse of power Globally, there is a struggle going on about who controls information and part of this is about who gets to see publicly funded research. George Monbiot has given excellent coverage to how academic research is being captured by corporate interests and what people are doing to oppose this (see…
Almost the first thing Highland and Islands Enterprise did after it bought back Cairn Gorm Mountain was to inform the Cairngorms National Park Authority that it wished to proceed with the Planning Application to redevelop the Ptarmigan building near the summit of Cairn Gorm (see here for background). About a month ago stories appeared in…
Following my post on 28/2/2019 about the ADAC Structure and COWI reports on the funicular (see here), this post shows how Highlands and Islands Enterprise are deliberately trying to cover up and hide information about what has gone wrong with the Funicular on Cairngorm. I sent an FOI request on 03/10/2018 for two other reports…
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…
In June Parkswatch exposed the unlawful warning system the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority had introduced along with the camping byelaws (see here). Staff had no legal authority to introduce such a system, were failing to inform people who were warned of the consequences or their rights, and were retaining personal data about…
Parkswatch sometimes gets it wrong and has done so in claiming that with hydro schemes in the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park that it is the tracks, not the buried pipelines, which are the main issue. That is not the case at the Burn of Mar hydro scheme, situated at the back of Conic…
In January I blogged about the estate management plans the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority has been developing with some landowners (see here) and which I had requested be made public last October. As a result of my appeal to the Information Commissioner, in July the LLTNPA “voluntarily” published some information on Integrated…
Venue – Balmaha Visitor Centre Images from Wikipedia On arrival seating was arranged in an Open Area of the Visitor Centre. Then the seating was removed except for three chairs for members of the public attending the meeting – there were four of us! Apparently it was to be a “Standing Meeting” where only members…
The Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority Board will be meeting on Monday in the National Park Visitor Centre at Balmaha (see here) The agenda and papers were published over two weeks ago – a record for the LLTNPA – but a reflection of how little is in them. There is only one item…
Following coverage of Highland and Islands Enterprise and Natural Retreats failures to act on health and safety recommendations from independent consultants about the ski life infrastructure (see here), HIE refused to provide a copy of the latest report (they had provided two previous reports), citing commerical confidentiality and intellectual property rights. Malcom Garfoot appealed and…