Year 2, Week 52

Masterplan Consent Areas, Highland Investment Plan ...

Masterplan Consent Areas

The hot issue over the last couple of weeks for your ward councillors, and also some community councillors, has been Masterplan Consent Areas (MCAs). A paper for the Environment and Infrastructure (E&I) Commitee of the council on Thursday was devoted to MCAs and the council’s response to a Scottish Government consultation on the implementation of them.

Essentially MCAs are a way of the council taking a lead in planning terms and creating a plan for an area which defines what can be built there. This is similar to what we already see for large planning applications, but the difference here is that the council take an active role from the start, rather than just saying via things like the Inner Moray Firth Local Development Plan (IMFLDP) “we’ll let you build houses here if you want” and leaving it for a developer to come up with plan as to how that will happen.

Although this is just at the consultation stage and no decisions were being made at the E&I committee as to where MCAs might be brought forward the paper did indicate possible sites in support of the freeport and top list (see 9.4 in the paper) was our old friend Nairn East - the land behind Sainsburys stretching across Granny Barbours Road around to Househill.

You may remember that Nairn East, aka NA05, was removed from the new IMFLDP after your ward councillors got the Plan changed to say work could only start after the A96 bypass was completed. As a result of which the reporter removed it from the Plan saying:

The uncertainty regarding the implementation of the A96 dualling and Nairn Bypass project raises doubt over whether development on allocation NA05 is deliverable within the plan period.

But now here it was back, along with several other sites removed by the reporter.

We were not best pleased and neither were representatives from the Nairn community councils or from NICE who, as you know, are currently working on the Nairnshire Local Place Plan (LPP).

Anyway, after numerous meetings held at short notice, by the time this came to the E&I committee we were in a better position. All four local members spoke on the issue, you can watch the whole debate here. Click on arrowhead next to item 6 to jump to the start of that item.

As will be clear from the comments made by both the chairman and by Scott Delgarno, the planning officer leading on this, the work which Cllr Michael Green and I had done behind the scenes before the meeting paid dividends and that was reflected in the introduction by Cllr Gowans and also Scott's introduction and later comments by both him and Malcolm Macleod, the Assistant Chief Executive with responsibility for planning.

We also got the response to question 5 in appendix 1 changed from:

Any specific MCA proposal should involve stakeholder consultation including community councils but only once the draft boundary and broad intentions of the MCA have been formulated.

to:

Any specific MCA proposal should involve stakeholder consultation including community councils and consideration of any Local Place Plan.

The furore over this had set off suitable alarm bells with councillors in other wards too and we got numerous members rising to make similar points to us, so that was good.

There's still work to do on this, not least over governance which I raised in my speech, but we did appear to have the general support of both officers and members as to our view of the importance of keeping the LPP and the views of local communities front and centre.

MCAs aren't all bad news - if you watch the debate you'll also see Cllr Louden speaking to why he sees them as vital and for his ward of Tain, where the freeport will be a huge boost to the local economy with little down side, that's understandable - but I think we've ensured that the council and officers are clear that one wouldn't be welcomed for Nairn East in the near future and, once the bypass is in place, it should be on our terms.

Highland Investment Plan

It’s full council this Thursday (and possibly Friday too!) and the big item is the Highland Investment Plan. You may remember that back in the autumn we had to cut back on our Capital Programme and since then the administration has been looking for a way forward and that’s now come to fruition.

The Plan calls for us to increase council tax by at least 2% every year over the next 20 years and earmark that to increasing our borrowing. This gives us the equivalent of £50-60M a year to spend on capital projects while keeping our borrowing costs at around 9-10% of our revenue costs, and hence affordable.

This money will be used for things like improving our roads and also building new schools, with an emphasis on the latter being to try to consolidate education and other activities into what they are calling Community Points of Delivery or PODs. So the idea where is that you might have nursery, primary, and secondary schools on one site and that also be the library, the council’s point of presence, a museum, a community centre, and might even include some retail space.

Examples where they are looking to do this in the first phase include Dingwall, which needs a new primary school and also a replacement for St Clement’s, a school for children with complex and multiple additional needs from all over the Highlands, plus it needs a new council depot. So the plan would now be to do all three, at the same time, and probably on one site.

They’re also looking at using the money to improve existing schools which remain basically sound (interestingly that’s mainly the older ones - the ones built in the ‘60s and ‘70s are falling to bits) so they can last longer and become more energy efficient.

Here in Nairnshire we’ve already got the new academy coming along of course but we also have four primary schools. Of those:

• Auldearn and Cawdor can be found in Appendix 9 of the paper “A and B rated schools (Maintain at This Level)” so they are deemed to need routine maintenance.

• Millbank and Rosebank fall into Appendix 7 “Phase 2 Priority Locations for Major Investment (Year 11 Onwards)” so the council will be looking to do serious works there after 2035, and they might replace the schools completely.

It is an ambitious plan and, as a result, our total General Fund borrowing which is £869M now will have increased by another £2,000M over 20 years but our physical assets will be a far better state.

Planning applications

The following new applications were logged since I last posted:

• 24/01324/FUL - Kintail, St Ninian Road, Nairn, IV12 4EQ - Erection of garage and carport

• 24/01538/FUL - 8 Fairways, Altonburn Road, Nairn, IV12 5NB - Erection of extension

To find details search on the reference number on the planning portal where you can also find details on how to comment.