A thousand issues for £400 a day Borders examination

EXCLUSIVE by DOUG COLLIE

An examination of Scottish Borders Council's proposed Local Development Plan [LDP] will get underway later this month following the appointment of a Government reporter who is expected to look into over a thousand unresolved issues across 52 of the region's 93 towns and villages.

The council has been told it will have to pay £400 per day for the services of  planning reporter Nick Smith with the possibility of additional reporters being appointed 'to aid the speedy delivery of the (examination) report'. Any administrators assigned to the project will require a £160-a-day fee from the local authority.

The LDP contains dozens of development proposals including housing allocations for each of the area's settlements. A consultation exercise prior to SBC's request for an examination of the plan attracted a total of 1,043 representations from members of the public, community groups, local and national businesses and organisations.

Ian Aikman, chief planning and housing officer at SBC states in a letter to the Scottish Government's planning division: "Following analysis, there are unresolved issues pertaining to 1,008 of these representations. These have been organised into 76 groups."

That appears to constitute a formidable task for Mr Smith who is due to start work on the Borders examination from September 26. Some of the issues are both complicated and controversial including the LDP proposals on housing at Netherbarns, Galashiels opposite the Abbotsford home of Sir Walter Scott. The Netherbarns section of the document attracted scores of letters of objection from around the world and from the Abbotsford Trustees.

There were objections too in the case of the council's plans for 300 houses and associated developments on the Lowood Estate, near Melrose, which the local authority purchased in 2018 for more than £10 million, including professional fees.

An initial planning application has been submitted to SBC (by SBC) for permission to start the long and costly process of developing infrastructure on Lowood. It is not clear whether the application for road building at the site will be affected by the LDP examination.

One of the objection submissions came from Ian Lindley, former director of planning and economic development at the Borders local authority. His written representation covered a number of settlements including Lowood/Tweedbank.

Mr Lindley claims the north eastern extent of the proposed mixed use area at Lowood breaches existing and even the limited proposed tree screening and extends to the very edge of the Tweed. 

"Why bring mixed use to such a public focus on the edge of land designated of special landscape value and in sight of the iconic Listed Lowood Bridge in such a sensitive valley setting, immediately alongside the protected River Tweed and encroach upon an area subject to flooding?", he asks. "Where also is the contingency planning for Climate Change?  Reference is made to a possible replacement for Lowood Bridge and to the alignment of any Waverley route extension, but no clear indication of either is shown.

"How and where will existing roads link to any new bridge alignment? What are the impacts on the proposed site plot layout, screen planting and future responsibilities? How will buildings be arranged to address the edge of any new road or railway? How will railway land-take affect the above, (including creation of wider embankments to achieve rail headroom clearance over main roads)? How will the impact, on existing or proposed planting, of associated tree-free zones (as required by rail operators to ensure clearance between trees and overhead electric catenary supplies) be assessed/planned and implemented?"

Mr Lindley warns that without clarity on such issues, a series of uncoordinated ‘discoveries’ around these related issues is likely which would lead to the development of "another low quality/anywhere town industrial site, but in the middle of the Borders scenic gem and tourist hot spots."

Middlemede Properties Ltd., the owners of salmon fishing rights on the Tweed right next to the Lowood Estate say the Lowood site has failed the effectiveness test and has not been deliverable within the set Scottish Government timeframe for the allocation. One of the fundamental factors is the problem with development viability relative to the considerable infrastructure constraints that exist, according to the company. There has been a failure to address a delivery mechanism given the considerable infrastructure requirements.

Middlemede's agents state: "It is considered the Council has failed to carry out a proper Appropriate Assessment of the potential impact of this development on the River Tweed SAC [Special Area of Conservation] because it had not considered what mitigation measures it proposes to apply.

"Integral to this exercise and indeed to our client’s interests in the river will be the need for a new bridge and flood protection works to be considered and costed. The work involved in the creation of a new bridge at Lowood is the work that has the potential to create the greatest adverse impact on the habitat so this needs to be established at this stage as part of the overall planning process."

There is an objection too from the Scottish Government Planning and Architecture Division to the Lowood plans.

Included in their submission is the following passage: "The ‘Site Requirements’ should include any required transport interventions that have been identified through a cumulative transport appraisal including sites from within Galashiels that do not have planning permission, to fully understand the potential cumulative impact of the developments.

"It is not considered appropriate to include a large development site without fully understanding the potential transport implications, how the site can be accessed sustainably and how the site will accord with the National Transport Strategy travel hierarchy."

But SBC is sticking to its guns. Its reaction to the Tweedbank representations is that there should be  'NO MODIFICATION TO THE TWEEDBANK SETTLEMENT PROFILE AS SET OUT IN THE PROPOSED LOCAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN'.

The reasons given are that it has already been established that the site is deliverable hence its allocation for development with an indicative capacity of 300 units through the process of the Council’s Supplementary Guidance on Housing. This was approved by the Scottish Ministers.

"The allocation of this site for mixed use development has therefore been accepted within the recent past. The SPG [Supplementary Planning Guidance] confirms adequate infrastructure would require to be provided in order to deliver the site. It is not suggested that the indicative number of units will all be built within a 5-year period. 

"Typically, a site of this size in the Borders may take some time to be completed notwithstanding the fact the Council remains clear the site will be a highly popular option for potential house builders and house purchasers. The Council’s Housing Land Audit 2019 programming shows that 30 dwelling units would come forward in 2023, 50 in 2024, 50 in 2025, 50 in 2026 and 120 post 7 years. This is an effective and deliverable site which should remain within the Local Development Plan as a mixed use allocation."

And the council argues that the transport issue raised by the Scottish Government has already been addressed.

A transport assessment commissioned by the authority "found that the movements associated with the 300 residential units at the site would not be expected to be significant. As an average, the maximum number of 157 two-way vehicles from the development would add less than three vehicles every minute to the road network."