YOUR VIEWS: Is imminent short term lets control area for Badenoch and Strathspey lawful?
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My urgent message to all 121 Badenoch and Strathspey trading short-term let operators whose planning applications have been lodged and held up in many cases for over a year, or not been determined – even if just applied before October – is to withdraw your application now.
We all applied believing that the new statutory powers could be applied retrospectively to existing operators so we had no choice but to do so.
That is now accepted as untrue – it only applies to new business/properties changed to STL after the controlled zone comes into effect, on March 4, so does not apply to us.
That having been explained, Highland Council apparently had an “Aha!” moment: 'Aha, we can insist under existing ‘material change of use’ as a reason for insisting on planning!'.
Scotland’s chief executive of the year Fiona Campbell, in that role with the Association of Scotland’s Self-Caterers, obtained legal advice from no other than Burnet Paul solicitors that such a blanket approach under this heading is unlawful.
STL solutions co-founder Iain Muirhead, one of the operators who took the successful Judicial Reviews, warns against allowing our unlawfully procured planning applications to proceed.
They will be assessed under new planning rules brought in after we applied and we did not, do not need planning consent.
His advice, like mine – and we need to do this immediately, before we are assessed (in Edinburgh folk in our position are being picked off one by one, on a case-by-case basis, with the current refusal rate being 98 per cent) – is to withdraw all planning applications immediately.
Don’t play their unlawful game – withdraw applications immediately to stop being refused.
We are all conditioned to do as authority tells us but these are our businesses, our livelihoods, that are at stake.
Once withdrawn, we can then demand licences be considered now: if the council lodges a demand under ‘we need proof, not material change of use’ then we apply for a Certificate of Lawfulness which must be assessed as what was lawful at date we commenced.
If planning finds against us we can appeal against their reasoning.
And if we still think it’s unlawful we can raise class actions for Judicial Review – Edinburgh City Council has been beaten twice already – and if we have lost business between appeal and decision, we can claim compensation.
Now that transfers a lot more power to us rather than waiting to be picked off on a case by case basis.
Don’t dilly-dally. Do it now.
Gordon Thomson
Gordonhall Farmhouse
Kingussie
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Lost for words for once
The Monday Club and Debating Society has met weekly since the last century at various hostelries in Kingussie. This was the case until last Monday (February 12) when, much to the consternation of this worthy and esteemed group of debaters, there was no establishment open to accommodate them and their words of wisdom.
To paraphrase the old Aussie song:-
‘There’s nothing so lonely, morbid or drear
Than to stand in the street of the town with no beer’
Aly Maclean
The Monday Club
Kingussie
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Funicular opened 134 years ago and still going strong
The current situation on the Cairngorm funicular is hard to comprehend (Strathy, February 15, page 1).
The famous Lynton and Lynmouth funicular cliff railway was opened in 1890 and is still running. There are no problems with cable safety or terrorism.
Why is the beautiful Cairngorm funicular still closed? It would be so handy for old people like me, who used to run to the top and back, to be once more on the Cairgorm summit via the funicular.
Wojtek Alberti
Fraserburgh.
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Welcome appointment of first woman of colour as Scottish Minister
I am pleased Kaukab Stewart MSP is now Minister for Culture, Europe and International Development: the first woman of colour to hold a ministerial position in the Scottish Government.
Multiculturalism works for the benefit of all. With so many job vacancies, Scotland requires a realistic approach to migration to grow our economy and secure a healthy, modern, multicultural society.
However in view of the insular nature of UK Brexiteer governments, this will only happen in a fully independent Scotland as part of the brotherhood of nations in Europe and the world.
Grant Frazer
Newtonmore.
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Heated debate on challenges facing the planet
Despite the wide variety of the predicted huge monetary costs of net zero, intended to tame earth’s climate, Dermot Williamson (Strathy letters, February 8) believes enough could be saved and technological progress made to achieve good value for the politicians’ investment of UK taxpayers’ hard-earned money.
At the same time, he hopes, risks of dangerous climate changes would be offset.
However, his confident optimism is entirely unjustified, as follows:
• Since our output of manmade carbon dioxide (CO2), often judged but never adequately proven as the climate change ‘villain’, is only a negligible proportion, one per cent of the global total and Scotland releases only 0.1 per cent of that.
• Most of the world’s CO2 is emitted from countries whose fixed policies reject meaningful decarbonisation, net zero. They thereby save vastly while avoiding societal upsets and greatly boosting their already great industrial advantages over us who misguidedly comply with UN climate change advice.
There is no proof at all that decarbonisation could be of any climatic benefit.
• Whatever net zero might cost, we can’t allow it to drain resources from vital spending on national defence, education, health and our infrastructure such as roads (and potholes), railways, buildings, and utilities such as water supplies and electricity generation.
Our nation is already in huge debt. Fears of World War III increasingly beset us. No-one can make any reliable prediction as to how the climate might change, at least during the lifetimes of any of people alive today.
The world’s climate is ultimately controlled by the sun’s variable activity. We cannot influence that.
Present rising atmospheric CO2 levels, far from excessive, are vital for proliferation of crops and vegetation, essential for all life on earth.
Two major climate policy changes reported on February 8th show that “net zero” is in retreat:
The US Republican Party’s National Committee has resolved to free up restrictions on fossil fuelled energy generation.
The UK Labour Party has abandoned its £38billion green investment plan intended to offset potential adverse climate changes.
In short, if we let ourselves be ruined by climate scaremongers’ irrational hysteria, we are rightly taking ourselves for fools!
Charles Wardrop,
Viewlands Rd West
Perth.
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Are RSPB flying in face of real world?
Former SNP Minister Fergus Ewing has hit out at Scottish Green Ministers and eco groups for opposing plans to build a golf course in the Highlands.
This would be at Coul Links, north of Dornoch and is enthusiastically supported by those living in the area and by MPs and MSPs since it would create hundreds of jobs, boost the economy and tourism and help the environment and boost Scotland’s economy by £12 million.
The project is fully supported by the council which has approved the plans but it needs a Scottish Government Minister to rubber-stamp them.
Enter the villain stage left, in the form of the RSPB and its green hangers on who complain it would harm bird and animal numbers.
What a lot of tosh. The far too numerous directors of the RSPB have perhaps been too busy counting out their eye-watering salaries and reflecting on their future platinum-plated pensions paid for by their million-plus members to understand that birds and other wildlife adapts and actually increases in these circumstances.
The majority of the 1.1 million RSPB members are city types lured into the RSPB by advertising hype and do not have any idea of the real natural world.
Local democracy must be upheld and the Scottish Government must tell the objectors, to put it politely, to take a hike.
Clark Cross
Springfield Road
Linlithgow.
