South Nairn Development go ahead - What Laurie said at Tuesday's meeting.

Here's most of what Laurie said:

"“I’m not really in favour of losing good agricultural ground but well we have, it’s in the local plan. What I am concerned about though is any restriction on John Gordons the sawmill because that is a prime employer within the town and we really do need this. The phasing of houses, I would like to see it phased down, possibly down to 50 houses instead of 100 houses but I suppose I’ve got to accept this.”

”Will there be a demand for buses because I’ve seen some areas in Nairn where bus use is not that high.”

“I’d like to see the sub-development plans coming back to local members because I’m very concerned we

have 320 houses – fine we are knocking it through just like that and there’s no further council examination. […] I think that needs to be covered in some respect because you get the very frustrating situation where something goes wrong. Your green space goes wrong and suddenly you want the whole thing to stop and you can’t. I do agree that sub-development plan should really back to local members in a public forum.”

”An issue that has not been raised here is if you put 360 houses with an average of two cars per house, that’s about 650 cars including the odd one abandoned. We haven’t really got that parking space in the town centre. We haven’t covered any town centre car parking. There will be a small majority of people taking their cars into the town centre and our town centre car parks are pretty well full at the moment so what I would like to have seen here is like a hundred thousand pounds planning gain for town centre development in relation to car parking or even additional bus spaces which I think we might need if we are going to have additional buses.”

“Pedestrian footbridge, yes you’ve got a thousand pounds a house. We’re looking at something like twenty years for this and I don’t think that is fair on the community and certainly the stresses on the road and children walking to Nairn Academy. Yes they could go across the railway bridge but that is not ideal. Can we have this footbridge brought forward and if need be possible a temporary footbridge – maybe a Baillie style footbridge.  "

"The last thing I’ve really got concern about are these green spaces, the open area maintenance with these contracts because if the companies go bankrupt. You’ve got three building companies in here and we’ve seen the effect in Nairn when building companies go bankrupt. You’re left with real problems on your hands these factoring agreements that’s what I’m talking about.  I’d like a wee bit of strength in the factoring agreements. What does happen if a building company goes bankrupt or a factoring agreement company goes bankrupt – that’s another problem. As a Council we should actually be taking over these areas. That’s what we are here for we are a Council, we should be taking responsibility for these areas."