Hotel boss set for talks on Aviemore pool wrangle

The boss of Macdonald Hotels has said that talks will reopen with Highland Council later this month over access to the Macdonald Aviemore Resort pool.

Donald Macdonald, chairman and founder of Macdonald Hotels & Resorts, said "there has always been a real willingness on our part to reach a sustainable deal".

Members of High Life Highland have been unable to use the resort’s pool since the end of August because of a funding wrangle.

The hotel group is seeking more funding than has been put on the table by Highland Council.

Macdonald Hotels has mainly remained silent since the end of the summer.

But the Strathy received a lengthy statement yesterday from the company on the latest situation, and also criticising a local Highland councillor for his intervention at council headquarters on the wrangle.

In the statement, Mr Macdonald said: "There is nothing that would please us more than having this situation resolved.

"In fact, we’d already written to the council underlining how keen we were to have further talks and welcomed the positive interventions by Drew Hendry MP and Kate Forbes MSP, who have taken a mature, non-partisan approach to matters."

He then went on to attack Councillor John Bruce for a question he put before the full council in Inverness a week ago.

In it he quizzed leader Margaret Davidson on the role of public money in securing public access for swimming at the resort.

The hotel boss described Councillor John Bruce’s question as "poorly-researched, fatuous and ill-informed".

The statement went on: "He’s showing breath-taking cheek in attempting to re-write history, so it’s worth rehearsing the facts, both for his benefit but more so for local people.

"In 2004, a partnership of Bank of Scotland, Tulloch and ourselves brought forward ambitious plans to invest £54m at the Aviemore Resort which had fallen into disrepair after many years of neglect, to the extent that it was described at the time as ‘having all the charm of a disused air raid shelter’.

"Given the enormous potential benefits of this scheme to the local and Highland economies, and the large numbers of jobs which would be created, Highlands & Islands Enterprise supported the project with a grant of £6.3m - not the £8.5m which Councillor Bruce has claimed.

"HIE also acquired £2.4m in preference shares.

"However, due in large part to delay, obfuscation and obstruction by the previous administration of Highland Council, planning permissions were still not able to be delivered after 13 frustrating years of trying.

"As a result, and to the intense dismay and significant financial cost of the three partners involved, the scheme, which would have created hundreds of much-needed jobs locally in an area of the country which desperately needed them, was forced into administration.

"This obviously meant the loss of £8.7m of public money, which was utterly lamentable and deeply regrettable, as well as millions of pounds of losses to the three partners involved, but it also delayed huge investment in the local economy.

"It was only because Macdonald Hotels had a rock-solid commitment to regenerating the resort that we reached an agreement with the administrators in June 2009 which prevented it from closing down completely for a second time.

"Ironically, it was only after the administration process that Highland Council granted the planning permission which had been applied for 13 years previously and which two previous owners had walked away from during that time.

"There was nothing controversial within that planning permission and it’s no more than the design of the resort as it is today.

"Since then we have invested £9.9m in transforming the infrastructure at Aviemore and are now the largest private-sector employer in the area, with hundreds of full and part time staff employed there and an annual wage bill of £4.9m."

"Indeed, we estimate that the resort will have hosted over 165,000 overnight stays, including several international conferences – some of them with up to 500 delegates - in the current year, many of which will provide vital additional income to local bars, restaurants, shops and attractions."

Gordon Fraser, deputy chairman of Macdonald Hotels & Resorts, said: "It is, of course, right and proper that local politicians get involved in such important issues, but for Councillor Bruce to insist that we should simply swallow the enormous increases in rates, salaries and energy costs at Aviemore without seeking a reasonable increase in the amount we receive for allowing Highland High Life members to use private leisure facilities, is blatant double-standards.

"It’s a bit rich for the council to increase our annual rates bill by 50.3 per cent in the year to March 2018 and yet when we seek a modest uplift in charges to help us cover a small element of those and many other cost increases, one of the council’s own officials described our request as ‘unaffordable’.

"Like us, many local businesses might consider their large rates increases to be ‘unaffordable’ but we have no choice other than to pay them.

"Councillor Bruce should remember that we entered into this agreement, and were happy to do so, on the basis that it saved Highland Council from having to spend many millions on building their own swimming pool and leisure facilities locally.

"And he should also bear in mind that the annual sums we are discussing are far, far lower than those which Highland Council would face each year for running their own facilities.

"Despite the ill-judged intervention of Councillor Bruce, we have been encouraged by the constructive and helpful approach of other politicians and hope to meet with senior council officials in the very near future to resolve what has been a damaging and unnecessary episode.

"The sooner we can welcome High Life members back into Aviemore, the better, but it has to be on a sustainable and viable commercial basis."

Councillor Bruce was unavailable for comment.

He had asked: "Given that HIE awarded an £8.5 million funding package to Macdonald Hotels to develop the Avie-more Resort – including the construction of the leisure arena in the early 2000s – should Macdonald Hotels not allow High Life card members to use the swimming-pool

facility in view of the public funds they enjoyed and has this point been raised in negotiations?’

Highland Council has said it remains open to restarting negotiations.

Aviemore Primary School pupils recently wrote to Mr Macdonald asking for the pool to reopen and the school's parent council led by Judith Thurlow has also been part of the campaign.

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