No new housing in Nairn until we get a bypass

A mid-week special post to help put people's minds at rest

I was going to leave talking about this until after the Nairnshire Area Committee meeting next week but there’s a public meeting in Nairn tonight talking about plans for a Local Plan and, in particular, its relationship with the new Inner Moray Firth Local Development Plan (IMFLDP) and I thought it was important that everyone knows where we are now heading before that meeting.

You’ll remember, as I’ve talked about this a lot since before I was elected, that the new IMFLDP changes the areas around Nairn which are zoned for future housing development and, in particular, it adds Nairn East, labelled NA05 and NA06 on the map below, as preferred sites.

LDP map - areas marked in orange are zoned for development for housing

This caused howls of protest from everyone right from the start. I attended a Zoom meeting held by Springfield when they first started talking about putting houses on Nairn East and everyone was saying “you can’t start this before we get the bypass” and similarly the community councils have been, quite rightly, talking about the need to change to a doctrine of “infrastructure first” in planning. Springfield however claimed that they could manage to start before we got the bypass and so it remained in the Plan with vague words about doing transport assessments before development commenced.

Since the last consultation we ward councillors have been very clear with officers that we had listened to the people of Nairn and Auldearn and that we were not happy about this and at the recent ward business meeting I told them that we would not accept the new IMFLDP at all unless it was changed.

As a result the paper that’s coming to the Nairnshire Area Committee meeting next week has been revised and, as of last night, now says (my emboldening):

In terms of NA05: Nairn East & NA06: East of the Retail Park, it is recommended that these sites are retained as the principal direction for growth of Nairn. However, taking account of the scale of change that this introduces, and in light of concerns about the implications for the transport network, the development should be wholly dependent on the completion of the A96 Nairn bypass.

So there it is:

• There will be no new major housing development in Nairn before the bypass is completed.

 

Similarly employers, especially on Granny Barbours Road, were concerned about the threat of houses being built close to them and no space being left for them to expand so again as a result of our work with officers the paper now says:

In addition, it is suggested to include an explicit requirement for land to be provided for existing businesses to expand at Grigorhill and clearer protection on their operations. The Development Brief for Nairn East will consider and address infrastructure delivery, layout and phasing issues, with a collaborative approach to its preparation.

This is important as although the new IMFLDP already said that Nairn East was labelled for “mixed use” it would probably have meant that it would be mostly, if not all, residential as that’s the most profitable for developers.

• Now businesses will have room to expand.

 

Now this is still not perfect, but these things never are. The important thing is that we will now have a new Local Development Plan which addresses the biggest concerns of residents and also, by moving on to a new Plan, protects us from some of the weaknesses of the old Plan which I’ve spoken about before.

I’m sure some people still won’t be happy about this but on balance I think we’ve got a good outcome for all the people of the ward.