Year 3, Week 41
Lochloy Road roadworks, Delnies, Nairnshire Area Committee, Kingsteps Quarry, Cawdor & West Nairnshire Community Council, road closures ...
Apologies but this is another long one. It’s been a busy week and there’s lots of news.
Lochloy Road roadworks
Scottish Water has a collapsing sewer on the south side of Lochloy Road here between the first traffic calming constriction and the first golf club entrance (the area marked with blue hatching on the map below). It’s not at all obvious from the surface that there’s a problem (I’ve looked).
The repair work has been deemed by them as extremely urgent to avoid the sewer collapsing completely, compromising the service to local properties all along Lochloy Road, and necessitating more extensive and disruptive repairs.
Work will begin on Monday with temporary traffic lights in place and is expected to take three to four days. I have emphasised to officers that this will need to be well managed given the volume of traffic on the road. I am particularly concerned that we may see traffic backing up onto the A96 adding to the delays already being caused by Delnies.
Delnies
Talking of which I have been in communication with the developers of Delnies again this week as I’m not at all happy with how they’re balancing traffic through the temporary traffic lights at peak times but I’m getting fobbed off so I will be escalating to Transport Scotland.
Nairnshire Area Committee
Nairnshire Area Committee met on Monday morning. The papers for the meeting are online here and you can watch the whole meeting on YouTube if you’re so inclined.
We covered a variety of issues including deciding to increase council garage rents by 20% (which still puts us below the average across Highland), reviewing the Common Good accounts for 2024/25 and approving the budget for 2025/26, agreeing the roads maintenance programme for 2025/26, and agreeing to fund two projects to create a beach shower and improve access to East Beach from the river path using the council’s Community Regeneration Fund. We also received a report from the police.
Kingsteps Quarry
Kingsteps Quarry off Lochloy Road is a semi-wild open space used by the people of Nairn for all sorts of activities including building camps, jogging, mountain biking, and dog walking, and also provides an active travel route to Kingsteps. The wild raspberries in the late summer are also delicious! However, the paths have been neglected in recent years and were well overdue some maintenance work.
I talked about that in one of my first blog posts even before I was elected so I'm glad to report that we finally have some funding and work starts on Monday both to restore the paths to their previous width and also to cut back on some of the overgrowth that’s happened in recent years. This work is expected to take a couple of weeks.
Cawdor & West Nairnshire Community Council
I attended a packed meeting of this community council on Monday along with about 25 residents and a variety of issues were discussed.
There was a presentation by Sustrans and West Nairnshire Safer Paths on their work to improve the route of NCN1 which they are planning to bring further north so it will pass between Cawdor and the A96. This will make a more direct cycle route between Nairn and Inverness and visit a lot more communities on the way, including Clephanton, Croy, and Tornagrain.
The focus on this occasion was work being done by West Nairnshire Safer Paths to extend the off road path from Clephanton into Croy (it currently stops halfway there) but hearing about their longer term plan was also very interesting.
Road closures
I am starting to feel like a broken record but here’s the latest planned BT/Openreach closures.
First the C1172 from its junction with Lochloy Road south east across the railway line to the junction with the U2997 will be closed from Monday, 24th February to Wednesday, 26th February. Traffic management with signed diversions will be in place. Local and emergency access will be maintained.
Secondly a very short section of Lochloy Road around Druim will be closed from Thursday, 27th February until Monday, 3rd March. Traffic management with signed diversions will be in place. Emergency access will be maintained.
Finally don’t forget all the ones I mentioned last week, the last three of which have still to take place.
Planning applications
The following new applications were logged since I last posted:
25/00096/FUL - Land 560M NE of Evergreen Haven, Maviston, Nairn - Change of use of land to off grid wellness retreat; including staff/caretakers accommodation, three cabins, associated buildings, parking, solar array, access (retrospective)
25/00225/MSC - Land 100M SE Of Scealladh Scear, Auldearn - Erection of house and garage (Plot 2)
To find details search on the reference number on the planning portal where you can also find details on how to comment.