Week 43

Community councils, Ardersier Port, the council budget, and the bypass

Nairn West & Suburban Community Council

I attended a meeting of this community council on Monday night. Sadly I think the only members of the public there were members of Nairn River Community Council. I do worry that the public generally aren’t attending Nairn’s community council meetings. They are discussing issues which matter to the town it feels like it’s largely in a vacuum. It’s noticeable to me that meetings of Cawdor & West Nairnshire CC are regularly attended by 15-20 members of the public, and are all the better for it I think.

Anyway many issues were discussed including the new Academy, the future of the library, work of the Local Place Plan, and a proposal to ask for a simple, single carriageway, bypass of Nairn without the dualling of the A96.

Tempting though the last may be I think it would be a mistake as it would reset the clock and mean it could be even longer before we get our bypass … and I also have some potentially good news on that as I’ll discuss below.

Ardersier Port

I went to a public meeting in Ardersier on Wednesday night organised by their community council which was attended by about forty members of the public. It’s early days for the Port and they’ve yet to publish their business plan but they are putting in a planning application to create a roundabout on the B9092 Ardersier-Nairn road at the entrance to their site and that also includes proposals for a visitor centre, café, and gatehouse.

They’re also asking Highland Council to give them back the road from there to the A96, which is currently an adopted highway. The road was originally built by McDermott and the land on which the road is built is in the ownership of the Port but the road passed to Highland Council when the McDermott’s operations finished. Their intention is to keep it open to the public but re-tarmac it and generally clean it up.

It’s not yet clear where this decision will be made. Officers originally intended to take this to the next Nairnshire Area Committee meeting but I have pointed out that half of the road falls in the Culloden and Ardersier ward (the boundary runs down the middle of the road!) so arguably it should also go to the City of Inverness Area Committee.

The council budget

On Thursday we had a special, one agenda item, council meeting to agree the council’s budget for 2023-4. I gave more details of this in my last blog post so I won’t repeat that here but suffice it to say that the budget was passed as proposed, so our council tax will rise by 4% which will be almost the lowest increase across the country.

Some good news on the bypass?

I’ve been complimented in the past by readers about how little I let politics intrude on this blog but I’m going to make an exception this week as I have news. On Saturday Humza Yousaf, one of the three candidates to be leader of the SNP, came to Nairn and as I will be voting for him I took part in a little photo shoot outside St Ninian’s.

However my reason for bringing this up here is what happened beforehand. We met up at The Highland Weigh, the new social enterprise zero waste and ethical coffee shop in the old Burnett and Forbes shop (well worth a visit by the way) and I had a chance to talk to him one on one so I said to him I'd got two things I wanted from him: one easy, one less so.

The easy one was Independence ... but I would be remiss if I didn't also ask for a Nairn bypass. He laughed and said he didn't understand why it hadn't started already as "the money is there" and he promised that when he was elected he would sign off on starting work on the A96 dualling and the Nairn bypass.

Make of that what you will but I’m hopeful that he will live up to his promise.