Proposals for Tornagrain and Whiteness fade as Village plans gain momentum?

APTSec has been pouring over a plethora of documents as we approach the deadline - before 5pm on Friday 03 December ( Click here ) - for submissions to the Highland-wide Local Development Proposed Plan.

The more I read, the more I get the impression that there could well be a covert change of emphasis in terms of development in the A96 Corridor with a great deal more development being planned in smaller settlements.

The interesting thing is, what happens if - with lack of schools capacity and roads infrastructure restricting development at East Inverness and possible questions marks over Tornagrain and Whiteness - the key villages (and possibly other settlements) in the Inverness Housing Market Area cannot expand enough to satisfy the council's calculations in their Housing needs assessment? Will major developments in another Housing Market area, say the Nairn HMA, have to be accelerated through the forthcoming area plans?

Notes:

From HwLDP

The Council will support the development at Whiteness as part of the strategy to
provide a long term housing land supply in the area. Detailed masterplans will
accompany each phase of development in line with the current planning
permission, including provision in line with the already agreed upgrades to the
A96. The Council will also support the reuse of the site for renewables related
development, should the housing element not come forward.

Inverness, Nairn and A96 Corridor Transport Study

From 2011 to 2016, the early phases of the sites identified in the A96 Corridor
Framework were fed into the model. As set out in the Council’s Main Issues report
for the Highland wide Local Development Plan, the preferred strategy is to enable
the early phases of these developments based on adequate mitigation being
identified and provided, whether directly be developers themselves or in
partnership with the Council and Transport Scotland. The key developments
envisaged during this period include the Inverness Campus site at Beechwood, the
development of East Inverness at Stratton, small scale developments at Croy and
Cawdor, the early stages of Whiteness (where 50% of the housing is assumed to
be traditional “effective” housing and the remainder timeshare etc), and the
continued development of adopted Local Plan sites in Nairn (Lochloy and
Sandown/Delnies). The first phase of Tornagrain is assumed to start in 2016

Should councils be allowed to set application fees?

Interesting comments on this on the Planning blog today click here

What do you think?

Green Alternatives to Incineration

A little something for the public petitions committee

Calling on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to (a) immediately ban the construction of new waste incinerators and large biomass burners, and shut all existing plants within 5 years; (b) improve the monitoring of emissions from existing waste incinerators; and (c) accelerate Scotlands drive to reduce, reuse and recycle waste.

The content of the petition provides information on the potentially detrimental impact on pollution, climate change, public finance and non-renewable resources that burning of waste is likely to contribute to.

Petition here and background here

I have also received some interesting information on autoclaving of waste from Icare which will form the subject of a post HwLDP consultation period blog post

Icare here