Year 3, Week 8

Community Centre, money from renewables, building a lot more homes, beach erosion ...

Area Committee

Nairnshire Area Committee met on Monday and agreed to fund the Nairn Arts and Community Centre up to £50,000 from the Nairn Common Good Fund until the end of 2024. You can watch the meeting online below.

The release of funds is dependent on the Centre’s management board agreeing in writing to commission a feasibility study regarding establishing a sustainable management model for the Centre. For the full wording of what was agreed see the minutes.

Thank you to everyone who wrote to me about this. As I said in the meeting the universal view of those who wrote was that we should fund the Centre. Some did suggest we made this a loan and we did discuss that at the meeting but for various legal reasons it wasn’t practical to do it that way.

Full Council

We had a full council meeting on Thursday which you can watch online here. It was a long agenda but I’ll pick out a couple of items which I think may be of interest.

Social Value Charter for Renewables Investment

This paper set out proposals to get a greater financial contribution to the Highlands from energy companies. Currently they are encouraged to give £5,000 per MW of generating capacity per year and that goes to the community local to the development. So in our ward for example Winds of Change receive money from the Tom Nan Clach Windfarm which is used to fund projects in the Cawdor and West Nairnshire Community Council area.

There are all sorts of problems with this. For example some energy companies refuse to contribute (it’s not compulsory), or agree to contribute less, or agree to contribute and then pay less, or don’t index link the amount. Meanwhile on the other side of the fence some communities simply can’t find suitable projects on which to spend the money, so it just stacks up in the bank. Meanwhile communities just down the road in the next community council area can’t get funding for projects in their area.

So this paper proposed various changes. Firstly that although the £5,000 per year per MW would be retained for local community benefit a second payment of £7,500 per year per MW would be asked for to go into a Strategic Fund which could be spent anywhere in the Highland Council area. Both of these figures would be index linked.

It also makes proposals on how developers might assist in increasing or improving the social housing stock, offer shared investment opportunities in the energy projects for communities, help improve the skills base of local workers, and fast track grid connections for appropriate projects.

All of this remains optional for developers however so the council is continuing to press the Scottish and UK governments to make these sort of commitments mandatory for energy companies in the same way that developer contributions are now for house builders.

The Highland Housing Challenge

This paper highlighted the problems we have with housing development across the Highland Council area, both with existing demand for housing - especially social - and future demand from the freeport.

It suggests that we need to build 24,000 new homes in the next ten years - so that’s an increase in our total housing stock of 20%! Much of this demand is around the inner Moray Firth so, despite the adoption at the same meeting of the new Inner Moray Firth Local Development Plan, we will continue to see developers pushing to build in land not zoned for housing in the Plan with Masterplan Consent Areas, of which I’ve spoken here before, likely being used to do that.

Beach Erosion

I’ve mentioned before that I did a site visit with Nairn West & Suburban Community Council in April to look at the issue that the rock armour which protects the section of the Links from the only significant groyne to the Leisure Centre car park has been significantly disturbed by the winter storm which also did damage to the harbour.

A paper is now coming to the next Area Committee as to what we do about this. The options are to rebuild the rock armour or to let the beach spread south and re-route the tarmac path which is in danger of being undercut.

The wider news on beach erosion is better. A paper Dynamic Adaptive Pathways which was prepared for Highland Council suggests that East Beach is coping well and Central Beach east of the area which is causing concern can also cope so long as some steps are taken to reduce erosion of the dunes.

Planning applications

The following new applications were logged since I last posted:

• 24/02483/FUL - Market Stance, Geddes, Nairn, IV12 5SB - 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.