Liz: "just to let you know we’ve not forgotten about the bypass"

At the joint Community Council meeting tonight (Wednesday) in the URC hall a couple of high heid yins from the Highland Council planning department were taking soundings on South Nairn from the councils followed by a question and answer session for members of the public. Very interesting it was too and we hope to bring you snippets from the highly charged, but calm, debate over the next few days. For tonight however, here’s something interesting that Liz said during the proceedings:

“I’d like to come in just about the by-pass issue. I’d said to Iain Ramage when he interviewed me last week about the development. He said: “Could it be possible that the development may start before the bypass is there?” And you know, anything is possible but, however, our TECS officers are going down tomorrow to speak in Edinburgh about the bypass. So hopefully in the next week or so I will be able to report back an update from that. But just to let you know we’ve not forgotten about the bypass, we’re still trying to pursue it but the bottom line is I can’t promise people there will be a bypass before the development starts. I just wanted to make that clear because the headlines were we’ve forgotten all about the bypass or whatever it was. That’s not the case at all. We’re still pushing for it, it’s still very important for the town and, just to clear that up and our officers are meeting tomorrow down in Edinburgh with Transport Scotland.”

This week the article Liz refers to appears on the front page of the Nairnshire and is entitled “Long wait for the bypass.” Surprise anyone? The article also quotes comment from Michael Green who is concerned that the infrastructure is not there to enable South Nairn to go ahead. Michael’s view is shared by the town’s three Community Councils and their views were laid out in front of the planners tonight. More about that in future articles this week. Liz was perhaps stung by the paper’s editorial more than anything that emerged on the front page. Iain Bain titled his latest hebdominal musings  “Bypass off the boil” and he began:

“It is disappointing that Nairn Provost Liz MacDonald now considers that Nairn’s bypass project may not take place until housing development including south Nairn is on the ground. It is perhaps a measure of how priorities are changing in the SNP dominated Highland Council and Scottish Government.”

In response to that Liz obviously wanted to lay out her stall and state that the bypass is still very much on her agenda. Iain Bain went on to state in his editorial that it “had become almost an axiom of local development – that there should be no substantial development until a bypass was in existence or at least very definitely in plan.”

As we stated above the  three Community Councils earlier tonight said they didn't want development until there is a bypass but against a possible appeal one day by a developer, who might have been turned down on those grounds, would that be a viable position to take? The planners didn't seem to think so tonight - again more on that later this week.