South Nairn Decision - Friendly voices - 1. Jim Crawford

Here at Gurn HQ we've had another look at the webcast of the 18th of September and the meething that  saw the South Nairn application refused planning permission. There was a lot of support for Nairn which cut across party lines.  Here's what Independen Cllr Jim Crawford had to say:

“This application today highlights concerns I’ve had for quite some time and when we arrived in Nairn this morning there were about a hundred people who met us and on the t-shirts it says “Nairn is our town.” It’s

true, It’s not planners’ town, it’s not this committee’s town. It’s their town - they don’t want this. It’s been imposed on them. We’ve already heard criticism of the Highland wide Development Plan. The reason we are having problems today is because of a lot of these local plans. We’ve had this problem at the West Link, we’ve had this problem at Tornagrain, we’ve now got this problem coming up in Nairn.

At the last full Council meeting I asked could we possibly have a cross party group set up by you to look at the overall effect of planning in the Highlands and I’m formally asking you today would you please undertake that duty to form this group so we can come back, maybe in January after looking at planning to see if there is anything we can do to stop this happening again. To give the people back their voices, community councils have said they don’t want this, the local people have said they don’t want this, the local councllors have said they don’t want it and it’s still being recommended for approval. Well that is not democracy it’s not local democracy and that’s what we must return to the Highlands. “