Year 4, Week 2
Changes to bus services, East Nairnshire CC, water scarcity, sewage outfall, Highland Fox Hub, public toilets, road closures ...
Changes to bus services
Stagecoach have announced that they intend making several changes to bus services in the Nairn area on 7th July.
The most significant is that the daytime service 11 between Inverness and Ardersier will be increased from hourly to half-hourly … but the extensions to Nairn will be reduced to only four per day. Also, there will be no service down Lochloy Road and around Montgomerie Drive and Lawrie Drive. Apparently we’re just not using the service enough.
This is obviously very bad news so I’m discussing with officers if we can get the 251 Nairn Town service, which is run by Highland Council, to start coming down Lochloy Road. That would at least allow you to transfer at the bus station to continue your onward journey as we used to do in the days of the old service 20 Nairn Town bus but will still be a limited service as it only loops around Nairn a few times a day.
More widely we currently have services 10 (Aberdeen to Inverness, via Auldearn and Nairn) and 12 (Elgin to Inverness, via Nairn), giving a half-hourly service into Inverness, but from 7th July we will lose the service 12. To compensate Stagecoach’s M96 (Aberdeen to Inverness limited stop) will be enhanced so that a half-hourly service between Nairn and Inverness remains. The M96 will also serve Inverness Airport railway station as a park & ride hub, where passengers from/to Culloden will be able to interchange with service 11.
East Nairnshire Community Council
On Thursday the council agreed to an amendment put forward by your four ward councillors which I discussed last week (thank you to everyone who emailed me about this - all in favour) to include this community council in the next phase of the Review of the Highland Scheme of Establishment for Community Councils. So at some point soon another consultation will be going out on this. I’ll keep you all posted.
Water scarcity
Following an unusually dry start to 2025, Scotland has been placed on an "early warning" for water scarcity by the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA).
As a result Highland Council’s Environmental Health Team is recommending that consumers on private water supplies - i.e. not a Scottish Water mains water connection - use water responsibly, check their water system for any indications of leaks or contamination risks, and think about other options if their water supply is potentially in shortage.
If this affects you then I suggest reading this press release from the council which provides more details.
Sewage outfall
As you may know the output from the Nairn Sewage Treatment Works is carried by a pipe across East Beach, surrounded by wooden brackets which appear and disappear with the shifting sand, and discharges where the yellow buoy is anchored offshore.
Scottish Water have written to me to say that they are going to carry out essential repairs with around 18 metres of pipe being replaced by specialist divers (so this is presumably out at the yellow buoy end of the pipe).
Work is expected to begin this coming week and they anticipate the repair will take approximately two weeks to complete, but this may be subject to change depending on weather conditions, tides and shifting sands, which can all impact progress.
Highland Fox Hub
You may remember in the past me talking about the Nairn Finance Office in the central car park, often know locally as the “Italianate building”, which was surplus and hence the council decided to dispose of it by sale or rent.
The council had several offers for the building and the bidder which we local members preferred when we were asked about it has now purchased the building. So I was pleased to see that Highland Fox announced on Facebook this week that they are re-opening the building as the Highland Fox Hub “a co-working, meeting, and event space designed to be as flexible, welcoming, and inspiring as the people who'll use it”.
By the way this ties in nicely with the Local Place Plan whose five key themes include Jobs and Business and “the availability of space for business expansion” and also Town and Village Centres where “revitalising Nairn town centre is a high priority”.
Anyway, good luck to them with their new venture!
Public toilets
I read a couple of long threads on Facebook last weekend complaining about the state of the toilets (the one on The Links was closed after vandalism on Saturday) and so it seems worthwhile writing a few words about this as I’m getting a bit fed up of being blamed for us not having perfect toilets which are open all the time.
This is the situation we are in with toilets in Nairn:
Legally Highland Council has no obligation to provide public toilets. At all.
We have an ongoing problem with vandalism by children which means they repeatedly have to be closed and council has to spend your council tax on repairs.
On one hand we have people saying (as they did in one of the Facebook threads) that we should spend Common Good money on toilets, on the other we have people (and especially the community councillors who are meant to represent the people of Nairn) saying that we shouldn't spend Common Good money on toilets because that's Highland Council's job.
Both I and Nairn BID have tried to persuade local businesses to sign up to a "Comfort Scheme" where the public can use the businesses’ toilet, even if not a customer, in return for a payment of £50-£300 per month. I’ve written about this several times here. It has worked well elsewhere but in Nairn no business is interested and I’ve given up trying.
Despite all this we have explored various options for providing toilets at the harbour again but the costs are horrendous and would have to be picked by the Common Good Fund (because of 1, but see also 3) so at the moment we’ve given up on that and instead we are working with the Nairn Access Panel towards improving the toilets on the Links as those seem the most vital.
But again I go back to 2, how long before they’re vandalised? Again. Oh, and before you ask CCTV doesn’t work - it’s been tried elsewhere, even inside the toilets, but didn’t stop the vandalism.
Road closures
Our old friends BT/Openreach continue to lay more fibre through the rural areas of the ward and are doing two one day closures of the C1154, each one being from 9am to 3:30pm.
The first is on Monday, 27th May, and is a section of the road across the Bruachmary Burn east of Clunas reservoir as shown on the map below.
The second is the section over Dulsie Bridge and it will be closed on Tuesday, 27th May.
Local and emergency and local access will be maintained for both and, as I said, the road will be closed only during the non-peak hours of 9:00am and 3:30pm.
Planning applications
The following new applications were logged since I last posted:
24/04804/FUL - Land South Of Belivat Cottage, Nairn - Erection of house (conditions 1-6 (21/03937/PIP))
25/01160/S42 - Nairn Academy, Duncan Drive, Nairn, IV12 4RD - Section 42 application to develop land without compliance with Condition 16 of planning
permission 23/05756/FUL (new grass pitch provision)
To find details search on the reference number on the planning portal where you can also find details on how to comment.