Letter in P & J 5 July 2013: Housing in national park

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Written by Roy Turnbull

Category: Debates

Published: 18 July 2013

SIR, – Your report (July 4) on controversial housing in the Cairngorms National Park quoted park board member and former Rothiemurchus head ranger Willie McKenna claiming that there was a desperate need for more housing in the area.

Highland Council figures show that 3,524 houses were built in Badenoch and Strathspey from 1976 to 2010 – on average, 100 houses a year. There were 1,291 houses built in Aviemore, which Mr McKenna represents.

Moreover, Highland Council's old policy of 25% of open market houses being “affordable" is similar to the national park's.

This policy, while it has enriched large building companies and estates, has also caused unsympathetic cramming and expansion of settlements and considerable environmental damage in what is now a national park.

If, as Mr McKenna claims, this policy has not solved the “desperate need" for housing for local people, is it not time to change the policy?

Adopting residency criteria, whereby new-build housing is available only to those with national park connections, reduces environmental damage and provides local people with housing they can afford.

Other national parks have adopted residency criteria. Why not Cairngorms?

Roy Turnbull, Torniscar, Nethybridge.

P & J 4 July 2013: Fears for park wildlife as homes protest fails

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Written by Gus Jones

Category: Debates

Published: 04 July 2013

Illustrated Talk: Wonderful wood ants of the Cairngorms

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Written by Tessa Jones

Category: Meetings

Published: 03 July 2013

Open Public Meeting. 

Illustrated Talk by Hayley Wiswell.

Old Kirk, Nethybridge
By Castle Roy
Wednesday 10 July 8.00pm

All welcome
Free ~ donations welcome
Further informatin telephone: 01479 821491

Letter to P&J 29 June 2013 on Nethy Bridge Application

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Written by Roy Turnbull

Category: Debates

Published: 29 June 2013

Dear Sir,

In your report "Cairngorms homes 'will destroy woodland'", 27 June, you refer to the application to build 58 houses in School Wood, Nethy Bridge, which would destroy 12 acres of this ancient woodland in the Cairngorms National Park. You mention that Nethy Bridge Community Council "supports the application".

The constitution of the NB Community Council states that function of the Council shall be (inter alia) "to ascertain, co-ordinate and express" to the relevant authorities "the views of the community which it represents". This planning application is for the largest number of houses ever proposed in Nethy Bridge, yet the Community Council failed to convene a special public meeting whereby those community views could be ascertained. The Minutes of the May monthly meeting at which the Community Council decided "no objections" to this application, record "Members of the Public: None".

Moreover, during consultations over the National Park Local Plan in 2005, to which this application relates, the Community Council did convene a well-attended public meeting (12 January). That meeting voiced overwhelming opposition to large-scale housing developments in the village. Similarly, at a public meeting with the applicants in the presence of the National Park head of planning (5 April 2012), very considerable concerns were expressed over housing developments in School Wood. Notwithstanding those concerns, a community councillor then expressed "100 per cent support" for the proposal, apparently oblivious to the fact that his remit was to express the community view, not his private opinion.

I submit that the "support" provided by Nethy Bridge Community Council for this application merely reflects the private views of the half-dozen councillors involved. It is not a fair reflection of the views of the community that it is supposed to represent.

Yours sincerely,
Roy Turnbull
Nethy Bridge

BSCG thanks champion of invertebrate conservation Alan Stubs

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Written by Gus Jones

Category: Insects

Published: 25 June 2013

As a token of appreciation for his outstanding contribution to conservation BSCG on Wednesday 19 June presented a framed photo of the Aspen Hoverfly, one of the most celebrated rare hoverflies in the UK, to Alan Stubbs. The occasion was the opening of the Alan Stubbs library at the English headquarters of Buglife in Peterborough.
Alan Stubs, who is on the board of Trustees of Buglife the Invertebrate Conservation Trust, wrote ‘British Hoverflies’ an illustrated identification guide. This landmark guide first published by the British entomological Society in 1983, and republished in an expanded form in 2002, has successfully encouraged people across the UK to take a detailed interest in hoverflies. These attractive and astonishingly agile creatures are in their life styles one of the most diverse and fascinating groups of insects. They are rightly considered valuable indicators of environmental health and it is now appreciated they play important ecological roles including for example in pollination of plants once thought to be entirely wind pollinated.
The photo taken earlier this month by BSCG member Tim Ransom while searching for hoverflies in Badenoch and Strathspey with Buglife entomologist Steven Falk , illustrator of the landmark 1983 British hoverfly book, is of an aspen hoverfly initially spotted visiting flowers of bird cherry at Insh Marshes National Nature Reserve. Few naturalists have been privileged to see this rare insect in the wild where it is even more rarely subject of such a detailed close up portrait.
As Alan Stubs explained after the presentation this sizeable orange hoverfly (Hammerchmidita feruginea) is a flagship species for a number of other endangered species that like it depend on decaying wood in a few areas where relatively sizeable stands of aspen survive in Badenoch and Strathspey.
The aspen hoverfly With the pine hoverfly Blera fallax both features within the top list of 26 species identified by the CNPA in the Cairngroms Nature Action Plan as requiring focussed conservation attention between 2013 and 2018.
Alan Stubs who played a key role in establishing Buglife has also written a book on British Soldier Flies and is currently engaged in a work on British craneflies.