George Allan
Recent editions of Mountain Views have praised the Cairngorms National Park for stepping up its game with regard to aspects of environmental protection; however, the question must be asked as to whether officers are sometimes going too far to accommodate the wishes of developers. The job of planners is, of course, to apply the law, and it is right that they should give pre-application advice to developers, but two recent cases suggest that, in doing so, they sometimes pay less heed to the aims and policies of Park than they should.
Firstly, Cairngorm Mountain lodged an application to create two major artificial ski slopes to the east of the main car park. There were numerous objections, including one from NEMT, but the advice of the Park’s Planning Officers was to approve it, despite the obvious environmental detriments. Thankfully, the Park’s Planning Committee took a different view and rejected it.
Secondly, the Balavil estate in the Monadhliath applied to construct a new track deep into a wild land area, primarily for driven grouse shooting. Initially this was presented simply as an upgrade of an existing track but howls of protest that this was not true led to planning papers being altered and consideration of it by the Planning Committee being postponed. The proposed new track follows the line of an old path which has been damaged by ATV use, any previous ‘formal construction’ being marginal. Planning officers recommended approval despite the presumption in the Park Partnership Plan that there should be no new tracks in open moorland. All the major environmental bodies objected in the strongest terms, with NEMT, Badenoch and Strathspey Conservation Group and an individual objector speaking at the Planning Committee meeting in January. A number of Planning Committee members agreed with the objectors and the matter went to a vote: unfortunately the track was approved by 9 votes to 6. The impression NEMT has, perhaps wrongly, is that officials went out of their way to ease the process for the estate when they should have been viewing the application with a much colder eye. A crumb of comfort is that the meeting brought to the fore the fast growing problem of damage caused by ATVs. The Committee acknowledged that the case raised wider issues that now needed to address and NEMT will be holding the Park to this commitment.
A final point is the issue of enforcement. The law requires that developers are given time to make good their failures and Park has been turning the screw more effectively recently. However, where estates are clearly giving the Park the run around, formal action should be taken much more quickly- the track above the Clova Hotel and the illegal tracks on Dinnet spring to mind.
Illegal track above Clova Hotel ©Helen Todd
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