As Chair of NICE (Nairn Improvement Community Enterprise) over the last 2 years I have been involved in helping produce a genuinely community-led Local Place Plan for our area.
Scottish Government official policy is fully supportive, indeed encouraging of communities playing a more active role in local decision making. The Local Place Plan is central tool in empowering communities to make important decisions about their own community. Questions such as ‘How big can we grow?’; ‘How many houses do we need?’; ‘What infrastructure needs must be met?’; ‘How can we be sustainable?’; and ‘What future do our current school pupils see and want?’ are issues that require local input.
Nairnshire wants to see Nairn as the county town working closely and in harmony with our rural hinterland-farmers, foresters, and estates in Nairnshire. A well understood Scottish Model.
We do not want to be a retirement town, and we do not want to be a commuter town. The big message we have been trying to convey is that we want more local employment and to get our population age structure back into balance.
Sadly we have experience of bad planning with the development of 1,000 houses at Lochloy at the east side of Nairn. Even local planners admit it is probably Scotland’s best example of how not to plan!
1,000 houses with no amenities, including no primary school as the site was given back to the developer to build more houses. Both Nairn Community Councils cannot find an audit trail to the developer contributions, or minutes of a meeting where the decision to give the primary school site back were made. This is even after involving Audit Scotland and Police Scotland.
A development with no shops, inadequate sewage, no easy access, and in addition to lots of people retiring to Nairn. We have one of the highest percentages of over 65-year-olds in Scotland. Not surprisingly our death rate exceeds our birth rate by about 100 a year. This has in turn placed a big a strain on our health and social services.
We have also priced a lot of our workforce out of being able to afford their own homes.
Unfortunately, local planners and housing officials do not seem to have learned from all these mistakes as there are plans to build another ‘Lochloy’ at Delnies on the west side of Nairn.
Recent decisions have included drainage being directed onto land zoned for renovation of Nairn Golf Club, a major tourist attraction and huge local economic asset.
We have seen too many tragic deaths on the A96 yet no plans for a by-pass.
Scotland needs effective government, at local and central levels, and this requires having the right people doing the right job at the right time.
We cannot keep making the same mistakes. We need an honest and open discussion about what will improve the quality of public services and that necessitates using current best data – economic & demographic- to deliver value for money and productivity.
We must restore efficiency, honesty and good-will to all our democratic locality-based communities. We certainly need more houses, but we also need to ensure that those houses meet local need, do not overwhelm local amenities and are not aimed only at the second-home or retiree market. We want thriving towns and local people must be listened to in helping to achieve that outcome.
Dr Alastair Noble is chair of Nairn Improvement Community Enterprise