Planning permission is being sought to build 27 holiday lodges in and around the existing woodland and open space that forms part of the Aviemore Holiday Resort.
The Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) has decided to adjudicate on this application, and has replaced the Highland Council as the planning authority.
If you wish to post a comment on this page, this will help the Community Council to gauge local opinion, and we may be able to use this in our response to the Highland Council.
However, for the CNPA to take formal notice of your view, it has to be made as a comment on their website – the link is here.
Select the Comments tab, and fill in the form to make a comment. If you don’t have a CNPA login, you can register for one at the same time by clicking ‘Submit and Register’.
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This is the site plan, which shows where the holiday lodges will be located. The boundary of the proposed location is in red.
This is the location plan, which shows that the proposed development is to the rear of the Aviemore Holiday Resort site.
For more details, see the document provided by the developer in support of their planning application here.
Further holiday lodges are not required in my opinion. What is badly needed is much more affordable accommodation and homes for local people. For our children and their future families. I believe the transient tourist population has more than sufficient facilities to stay in and around Aviemore.
Those who need or want to work within the village cannot find anywhere to stay to allow them to take the current vacancies. These include gps, nurses, paramedics, as well as staff who work in local shops, businesses and support the current tourist industry.
This would also add to the current traffic congestion in the centre of Aviemore.
Without the basic infrastructure for local people, such a development can not be supported or staffed.
The lochan in the southwest corner of the development, although part of the resort footprint, has become an important food source for breeding Ospreys in the Strathspey area over the last 11 years, and especially since the closure of the fish farm at Rothiemurchus and its current state as an impoverished fishery. The lochan supports at least 10 active Osprey nests in the area each year, and is a ready food source for the birds and especially in times when local rivers are running high/fast or too low, the latter occurring more frequently in a warmer/drier climate.
Although I understand the lochan is used under a business arrangement with the resort, it brings eco-tourism (accommodation use, etc.) to the village by photographers like myself, and from around the world due to the quality of the location.
The design as given would severely impact the birds acceptance as a location to fish, therefore those lodges indicated as being closest to the lochan need removing from the design as well as make sure that any trees added as part of the development are managed to make sure ingress/egress by the birds is not affected in subsequent years. Also, building works in proximity to the lochan should be restricted so as not to deter the birds during the main fishing times (i.e. before 9am and l8pm onwards, April to mid August)
Macdonald Resorts should appreciate that the Ospreys visiting that lochan are a credit to them and their agent that operates it, and should not ruin nature for the sake of money