YOUR VIEWS: ‘Highland Council owes £21.5m to short term lets operators in the strath'
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With reference to your article on short term lets control zone (December 14), I welcome Highland Council’s decision last Thursday to bow to the inevitable and accept they are not above the law.
They have accepted they can only use ‘control zone’ powers to request planning applications for STL businesses, only for new STL businesses proposing to set up after implementation of the controlled zone – current plans being from March 4, next year.
It follows, then, that all existing STL operators should never have been asked as part of their licensing application to apply for planning before October 1, this year – the cut off date to be able to continue in business pending decision on licence grant.
They should never have had licence decisions held up pending planning decision; never had to endure planning not being able to make a decision, sitting on applications awaiting legal advice and never had the mental stress over concern of loss of their business.
You would think the council would be falling over itself to return fees and compensate other unnecessary fees as well as immediately having license applications assessed.
But not so – they are just going to treat the applications as if voluntarily submitted and not forced and decide applications in terms of current development plan and still hold up licence applications until decided.
Let’s recap. The Court of Session has decreed the Scottish Government legislation that allowed control zones only gives additional powers to request STL planning consent from after the control zone is implemented.
Any view the legislation gave retrospective powers that could be applied to existing STL businesses was wrong.
Our courts have had to remind us that retrospective removal of people’s livelihoods and businesses is an extreme measure and any legislation if intending to do so has to specifically detail such a measure.
No such power was given.
The court also stated that local authority non-statutory powers to decide if any change of use was material requiring planning permission has to be decided as at the date of that change of use ie when the property started as STL.
It is abundantly clear that Class 9 – the class that relates to houses – allowed a house to be main residence, second, third whatever, be able to be sold, purchased or let out on long term leases and short term let.
Indeed outwith controlled areas in Highland, there is no change – houses under this planning class are still used for these purposes.
STL was and is not regarded as ‘material change’ requiring planning.
An STL in Inverness did not, does not require planning as part of their licensing application and the vast majority have been assessed and granted.
The Government legislation brought in requirement for licensing of STL and not a requirement for planning permission other than in controlled zones and then only after the controlled zone was implemented.
If the local authority wishes to re-write past interpretation it can do so but it has to pay compensation to the businesses it destroys by changing the rules retrospectively
So your article states 215 applications are being held up in the proposed controlled area for the strath – 215 operators who cannot get licences because, wrongly, the licensing department thought they require planning first.
These are 215 operators that have been asked to pay out planning fees, architects fees and other costs; 215 operators who can’t get renewed finance; 215 operators who will require to be compensated by the local authority if they now seek to retrospectively change the rules and destroy their business.
The rule of thumb when selling a business is worth four times annual profit – let’s say average £25k so that’s £100k. Multiply this by 215 times is £21.5m.
Has the council budgeted for that?
Retrospective is a power of last resort as it destroys people’s livelihoods, existing livelihoods and not just future expansion once the change of rules is known.
It is one thing for the council to misinterpret Government intentions and legislation but quite another not to remedy as soon as known .
All licence applications currently before them must now be adjudicated upon and all planning fees and costs immediately repaid to the 215 who have been wrongly required to submit planning applications.
And then, of course, there are those operators that have pulled out believing planning would be refused when no planning was actually required.
And we have not even talked about damage to the local economy.
What an absolute mess.
Gordon Thomson
Ruthven Road
Kingussie.
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‘Locals are at the very back of the queue for Cairngorms National Park Authority'
Sadly after 20 years the Cairngorms National Park seems to be working for everyone except the poor natives that live in it.
As a result we are telling other areas ‘to be careful what they wish for’ with regard to becoming future national parks.
Our biggest concern is the loss of our cultural heritage which we have always described as ‘our way of life’.
Local native and indigenous people are the most endangered species in the existing national parks it would seem.
We were made promises before we became a national park that have now been quietly dropped because to quote the chief executive officer Grant Moir: ‘They are no longer priorities’.
Well our priority is to no longer be a national park if that is the case.
There are now serious trust issues between sections of society in the strath and the Cairngorms National Park Authority.
At the time of writing, it has emerged from a media leak that beavers are to be released next week by the CNPA.
The park authority promised us in a beaver meeting last Wednesday night with Donald Fraser, of NatureScot, that our faming group ‘would be the first to know’
The meeting was about us requesting a delay until the mitigation we asked for are in place.
But it transpires they were already planning it behind our backs and beavers were already in quarantine ahead of their release.
This is the second time that the CNPA’s assurances have fallen flat. The first time was when they put the licence application to NatureScot when we asked them to wait until we were happy with the mitigations.
It is another example of local residents being put to the back of the queue.
Ruaridh Ormiston
Kingussie.
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Costly error in climate emergency exchange
I APOLOGISE to Mr Dermot Williamson for mislocating his recent lecture on man-made climate change.
Its actual venue was, of course, in Newtonmore rather than Grantown.
However, Dermot Williamson’s claim that the cost for us in the UK to reach net zero by AD2050 would be £3 billion rather than the actual £3 trillion estimate surely represents a much more expensive error!
Our various differences of scientific opinion, on the causes, significance and our reactions to alleged manmade adverse climate changes, have already been described in detail in previous editions of the Strathy. Therefore, I don’t think these disagreements need further iteration.
Charles Wardrop,
Viewlands Rd West,
Perth.
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Getting by with a little help from our friends
In thanking you for a year of fair and unbiased content in your letter section, may I wish you all, along with friends and foes alike, health, happiness and joy at Christmas and in the year ahead.
Someone once said: “Friends make you laugh a little louder, smile a little bigger and live a little better.”
So enjoy the magic of the moment, as when the world turns with the promise of a million tomorrows, only love and friendship survives beyond time.
Planet Earth is full of colour, beauty and light and even in these dark and troubled times, since there is always more good in the world than evil, sense and worth will always prevail.
Grant Frazer
Cruachan
Newtonmore.
