Week 27
Remembrance Sunday, and the IMFLDP ... again
Remembrance Sunday
Today brought a new experience for me and many other new councillors: representing the council at wreath laying ceremonies across the Highlands.
I was at Cawdor war memorial where we were blessed with relatively warm and sunny weather and the Reverend Robert Brookes led a good number of us through short and solemn service including singing of a hymn and the National Anthem.
Mastodon
As you may already know I’m on Facebook and Twitter but, in the aftermath of Elon Musk’s take over of Twitter I’ve now got a Mastodon account which you’re welcome to follow me on if you’re on Mastodon too however this is a personal account, not a council account like the other two, so you will see me posting about many things which aren’t related to the council or Scottish politics … including some very bad jokes. You have been warned.
Inner Moray Firth Local Development Plan
In my last post I talked about the Inner Moray Firth Local Development Plan (IMFLDP) and the work your councillors have being doing behind the scenes to make it better for the people of Nairnshire (and I urge you to read it if you haven’t already).
The thing I didn’t mention in that post was the proposals for NC02, which zoned 25% of the Show Field for housing. That was actually better than before - the current IMFLDP allows 50% of the land to be used for housing - but there are plans afoot by local sports clubs for their own development for recreational facilities on that 25% and they were concerned about that so we’ve now got the Plan changed so that the zoning for that area is for residential or community use. So that’s another gain for the town.
As you know there was a meeting this week about the proposed Local Place Plan (LPP) which, as I indicated to the organisers eight days beforehand when I was invited, I wouldn’t be able to make. It’s a shame they couldn’t have given more notice. However two of our ward councillors did attend and, no doubt, we will get a report from them.
I’ve had some emails since that meeting urging me to vote to reject the new IMFLDP and I’ve also had emails from people who were at the same meeting urging me to vote to accept it. Thank you to everyone who has written, it’s always good to hear people’s views. You should have all had a detailed reply from me by now addressing the specific points that you raised.
And, for the benefit of those people who are still thinking of writing to me urging me to reject the Plan, the question I have for you is: how will this help?
As I’ve explained here previously, rejecting the new IMFLDP doesn’t leave us without a local development plan and so safe from development; that’s not how it works. Instead the old IMFLDP remains in place. So that means that we would be stuck with a Plan which gives developers a continuing green light to turn half of the Show Field into houses, to try to put houses on the land at Nairn South and, most significantly to me, on the land at Delnies west of Nairn alongside the A96 which was recently up for sale. And if that happens then in planning terms there would be every reason to put houses on to Sandown to fill in the gap.
So to my mind accepting the new IMFLDP, with the changes that have been made to it as a result of your comments in the consultation phase and our work as councillors since, is the least worst option for Nairn right now.
The next step is to get a Local Place Plan agreed and I've been urging the community councils to get on with it since I was elected as I'm sure they'll confirm. What worries me is that it has being talked about by those councils for at least a year now, if not longer. It's finally moving forward now but I fear it's going to be some years before we do actually have one. When it is in place that will give some protection to Nairn as it will sit alongside the IMFLDP, but until it arrives the new IMFLDP is the only shield we have.
Despite this I fear that we will still get people saying that we should have done more, or we should have rejected the new IMFLDP, but on balance I think we have got a pretty good deal for Nairn. It’s not perfect, but it’s a lot better than we would have had if your ward councillors hadn’t made it very clear which bits simply weren’t acceptable.