The Balblair Project

21 Responses to “The Balblair Project”

1. Gurnmeister on June 30th, 2009 9:58 pm

   Looks like Nairn will start at the Howford Bridge if this plan goes ahead. Enjoy it while it lasts Gurnites!

2. nairnbairn on July 1st, 2009 12:31 am

   What this blog-post doesn’t reveal (and it is only coyly mentioned in the 7N Architects webpage) is that the Balblair scheme is being devised “in co-ordination with adjoining landowners”.

   This in fact refers to the similar plan by Scotia Homes and others to build on the adjacent area between the zones shaded in red on the map, ie on the fields across the road from Broadley Garden Centre, and on what’s left of the Firhall site, thereby turning the whole of south Nairn over to residential housing. And you can bet it won’t be low density units with lots of green space like the Firhall site!

   The positive spin which has been put on this by planners (eg in the A96 Corridor Framework) is that such projects are part of the “rounding off” of Nairn’s urban development.

   A less charitable interpretation is that these projects, taken together with the existing housing estates of Tradespark and Achareidh, the Delnies and Sandown proposals envisaged in the A96 Framework, and the planned expansion of housing in the Lochloy/Kingsteps area, will result in Nairn as we know it eventually being encircled by a vast swathe of housing that will make the Culloden/Balloch urban sprawl look like a small village.

   So it’s not just an issue of road use and traffic, although the pressure such extensive development will put on Nairn’s infrastructure (not just roads, but drainage, water supply and all community services) will be enormous.

   But of course building houses on good agricultural fields (or Common Good land) is so much easier and more profitable than redeveloping the derelict areas of the town centre into attractive mixed-use retail premises, recreational spaces and public services…

   As has been said elsewhere, some development is necessary and indeed inevitable. But building extensive new housing estates before the town centre is sorted out and the transport issues are comprehensively addressed will make the town even more of a disaster zone than it has become already.

   This is a clear illustration of the importance of not just looking at individual schemes in isolation. There’s a serious need to take an overview of ALL the proposals for development in Nairn (something our elected representatives have thus far apparently failed to do).

   Time to stir up more local awareness, and to comment vigorously when the Highland Council’s new draft local development plan goes out to public consultation.

3. Cathy on July 1st, 2009 2:23 pm

   Yes Nairnbairn, time to stir up more local awareness, and to comment vigorously when the Highland Council’s new draft local development plan goes out to public consultation.

   The APT blog is running a countdown to Development Plan Launch day. In the meantime APT is working on ways to raise awareness of how and when to comment on the plan.

   Keep watching the blogs, the papers and ‘notice boards’around your towns.

4. Nairnac on July 1st, 2009 3:57 pm

   Landowners generating enormous profits by imposing horrendous settlements around the area while the local serfs and their elected officials look on powerless. Which century are we in again ?

   I went for a look round the area behing Matalan in Inverness recently and got hopelessly lost in the swathe of legoland housing. I only just got out before losing the will to live, and wouldn’t like to see the South side of Nairn ending up the same way.

   Is there actually a demand for these properties locally, or is it just the relentless growth of Nairn’s white settler retirement community.

   As an aside – does anyone know the average age of the Nairn population as opposed to the national average ? – walking up the high street during the week, I seem to be the youngest person by about 20 years, and I’m no spring chicken anymore. These statistics must exist somewhere in our surveillance society.

5. Balblair Witch on July 1st, 2009 4:08 pm

   It was my own Balblair Witch Project, and I’d have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for those meddling kids.

   Hubble bubble toil and trouble
   my plans might be foiled
   by the burst property bubble

6. nairnbairn on July 1st, 2009 6:20 pm

   You may not be a spring chicken, nairnac, but don’t fall into the “ageist” trap!

   You asked “Is there actually a demand for these properties locally, or is it just the relentless growth of Nairn’s white settler retirement community.”

   From Victorian times up to the present day, it’s largely the demand from those retiring (from the colonies, the armed forces, or work elsewhere) for decent well-designed houses, in gardens and with green spaces, that has resulted in the growth of most of Nairn as an attractive and civilised town.

   On the other hand, it’s the readiness of planners and builders to respond to the calls for “affordable” housing that has resulted in the construction of acres of pile-it-high, sell-it-cheap, pack-em-in identikit housing “units” that so disfigure much of Inverness’ growing suburbs. This trend is spreading in Nairn too – Bridgemill is only the latest example.

   So beware of what you wish for. People (retired or not) who seek attractive houses and a pleasant environment currently make a positive choice to live in Nairn, and can be expected to support efforts to preserve and improve the town’s environment. Too much emphasis on quantity and affordability, at the expense of quality and space, will turn Nairn into the legoland you claim to despise.

7. anon on July 1st, 2009 6:23 pm

   Cathy is right, time to wake up and get organised!
   Development yes – Inverness 2 No! No! No!

8. Brian Turner on July 1st, 2009 7:43 pm

   Too right, nairnbairn – common sense as usual.

   We don’t need to be obstructive about new development, and we don’t want to appear snobbish about any developments that occur.

   But the bottom line is that property developers are looking at profit first, and high density housing is a profit chaser.

   Hence all the more reason why the Highland Council needs to ensure that any developments conform to the needs of the town over the needs for profit.

   Developers *will* profit on any reasonable development plot, but they will chase the highest margins first if we’re not careful.

   The amount of money any reasonable-sized development will make is very significant, so the HC certainly shouldn’t be worried to tell any building company that trying to push for £X profit per square metre is not acceptable, because the developers know they should be able to make at least £Y profit per square meter.

   2c.

9. Nairnac on July 2nd, 2009 7:21 am

   Not intending to be ageist, just commenting on what I see, and I’m interested to know how the Nairn demographic compares with other places.
   I know Nairn has always attracted retirees, but the pace of the influx seems to be growing.

   The local propert market doesn’t seem to cater for ordinary working people in and around Nairn. Since the demise of the Ardersier yard there aren’t any employment opportunities where local people can find employment paying much above minimum wage. I saw some HIE figures recently which said that the average income across the Highlands is about £16,500, which sounds about right if you check the job pages of the courier.

   The Firhall development is a very pleasant, but slightly weird childless environment, and with 2 bedroom flats selling for £150k. Even if the average worker with a family was allowed to move there, they would need a 10x salary mortgage, which even Fred the Shred in his heyday would struggle to approve.

   We have a growing town with falling school roll’s, which strikes me as a somewhat unhealthy situation. And I dispair over potential employment opportunities for young people in the area. I just can’t see where many of them can get any kind of employment with any prospects.

   Nairn has a very divided population, split between the affluent retirees and the less than affluent locals and seldom do the twain seem to meet. It’s not just retirees from the colonies who desire ‘decent well-designed houses, in gardens and with green spaces’, local working people would like them just the same, unfortunately they’re unaffordable for most.

   With a little effort, ‘affordable’ needn’t mean uninspiring or dull, and the aesthetic values of the developments have to be weighed against the need for housing for younger, less affluent (poor)people. Whilst Bridgemill doesn’t exactly look inspirational, I like the idea that much more accommodation will be available for poorer, hopefully younger people close to the town centre, which will in turn lead to more life on the high street, and they won’t even need a car to get there.

10. Nairnac on July 2nd, 2009 7:39 am

    p.s. I’m far too old to be ageist

11. Cathy on July 2nd, 2009 9:08 am

    On a slightly humourous note; unless you are walking up the High Street at lunchtime I’d pretty much expect most of the children to be at school, nursery or playgroup.

    Being a white settler of working class origins and spending a lot of my life struggling to get and longing for a ‘decent’ home (the attainment of which involved sacrifices and heartache which I won’t even begin to explain) I believe we should all have access to space and quality and this does not have to come at the expense of the environment.

    Favoured interest and greed feed off public ignorance and apathy.

12. Brian Turner on July 2nd, 2009 9:22 am

    “walking up the high street during the week, I seem to be the youngest person by about 20 years”

    Perhaps that’s because many working families don’t have the luxury of free time across the hours of their working week? And students are in college?

    “We have a growing town with falling school roll’s”

    Do we really, though? Isn’t it the case that Rosebank used to be the secondary school, and is now a primary school precisely because of the need to accommodate increasing numbers of children?

    On top of that, I note on the Kylauren site along Lochloy Road, there is land set aside in the building plans for another school. Something projected as needed?

13. Nairnac on July 2nd, 2009 11:06 am

    What I mean about the High Street is that it doesn’t have a lively working family feel to it, with people in their 20’s/30’s/40’s going about their daily working lives there, people who are able to live and work in the community. Many of the people below retirement age have to work away to make ends meet due to the lack of available local employment combined with the disproportionately high cost of housing. Many of them who are around the town are home on leave from Azerbaijan, Kazahkstan, Nigeria, Siberia etc or the North sea , which while it brings in the dollars, does little for community cohesion.

    Rosebank school roll certainly seems to be contracting, and as a result they have to reduce teacher numbers, which seems to mean that although there is a smaller roll, class sizes are increasing !

    What I’d like to quantify is how many people are actually able to live and work in Nairn and maintain a decent standard of family life, and own a reasonably sized family home, with a little bit of space. In other words, a ’sustainable’ community. Not just in the sense of re-cycling our used copies of the guardian, but in the sense of families having a future here.

    To my simple way of thinking, it’s these people who the planners should be working on behalf of, forcing developers to build decent family homes which are genuinely ‘affordable’. Better still, have the council build them themselves. It was quite the rage at one time I believe, and places like Shanghai actually consists of decent sized houses with proper front and back gardens, and a great sense of community. That’s what we need, as well as the slightly cooky places like the Firhall community without children.

14. nairnbairn on July 3rd, 2009 10:20 pm

    This is turning into an interesting and useful discussion. Despite the ‘ageist’ quip, I have a lot of respect and sympathy for Nairnac’s views. He is right that Nairn needs to be a sustainable working community with a diversity of age-groups, and with opportunities for local work as well as facilities for families and leisure options for retirement. The town should not become a geriatric ghetto – but nor should it become an urban wasteland of anonymous flats and childrens’ playgrounds.

    The town needs economic activity to attract and retain people who will then live and work locally.

    But it is a delusion to believe (as the developers try to argue) that building lots of (affordable) houses will somehow magically create jobs and keep people in the town. Construction itself is short-term work. Building houses without the prospect of longer-term local jobs will turn Nairn either into soul-less commuterland for Inverness (just look westwards to see what I mean), or into a collection of sink-estates for those who might otherwise be homeless as well as jobless.

    Nairn has to get the economic planning right and the employment possibilities sorted before acquiescing in major programmes of housebuilding. Some approaches offer better possibilities than others. Traditional ideas aren’t appropriate:

    - manufacturing industry? There will be no new Ardesier-type industrial growth on the back of a second oil boom (and windfarms don’t create jobs). We have Norbord along the road. But does anyone seriously want or expect lots more similar industrial factories and works around Nairn?

    - business services and parks? Call-centres and commercial infrastructure services have brought jobs to the Highlands. But such developments are vulnerable, to competition from cheaper rivals in India and as we see currently, to downturns in the world economy.

    Our planners and developers have to be more imaginative. A sustainable local economy offering reliable employment has to build on local assets. What does this mean? Finding ways of creating jobs based on what we have and value. For example…

    We have a rich agricultural hinterland: we should be supporting farmers’ markets, and entrepreneurs like the Garlicky company, organic food growers and venison-sellers.

    We have a tremendous natural environment: the council should be encouraging businesses and supporting projects which focus on recreation, outdoor activities, and tourism. Tourism is already one of the major sources of employment and revenue in Scotland. But it is capable of much more growth if prudently planned and managed sustainably – and Nairn has great potential for jobs in tourism and related services if only our planners would support efforts to deliver it.

    We have fantastic climate and quality-of-life. The authorities should be facilitating small and medium businesses which (given the right facilities) can work from home or studio: web designers, writers, architects, internet-businesses, and anyone who values a “work-life balance”. To generate and retain jobs of this kind doesn’t need acres of tarmac-ed business park, or hundreds of cheap houses. But it does need quality services, investment in better communications, upgraded road rail and air access, adequate health and education services, a good range of retail options (Sainsburys and High street stores as well as the Tesco leviathan), decent and extensive high-speed broadband, and similar 21st century infrastructure.

    If the facilities are there, the investors and entrepreneurs will create jobs; and once the jobs are there, builders can, and will, respond to the demand for housing. But it has to be that way round.

    So yes, Nairnac, we agree on the need to make Nairn – and indeed other parts of the region – vibrant, sustainable and diverse communities. It’s just that we disagree on how to achieve this. We won’t achieve it, and certainly should not start the process, just by building lots more cheap housing.

15. Nairnac on July 4th, 2009 7:02 am

    Precisely what the Nairnac’s been saying. the Bank of Scotland must’ve read my comments……

    it’s official, Nairn is deemed ‘NOT AFFORDABLE’..

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/8134053.stm

16. Nairnac on July 5th, 2009 9:32 am

    Is Gordon offering a way forward….
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8123723.stm
    “these are local houses for local people” as they say in the model community of Royston Vasey

17. Brian Turner on July 11th, 2009 4:18 pm

    Good points nairnbairn – one area Nairn could really get a grip on is the IT sector, especially with the new datacentre coming to Inverness.

    One really good part of the Sandown application by Deveron was the business park – an ideal opportunity to expand Nairn’s employment prospects.

    The hope is that any resubmission would continue this line of thinking.

18. Bill on July 11th, 2009 8:21 pm

    Grip on the IT sector (Splutter I would suggest the Highlands are not the place to be if you are serious about setting up an IT business dependant on fast comms. In general an excellent job was made with Broadband on the back of copper phone lines, but the next speed ramp up is about as likely to come to Nairn as is a bypass.
    At the moment the amount of fibre capacity is extremely limited in the area, most of our data is routed through Aberdeen and as for secondary routes…
    Alchemy in Dingwall has talked a good talk about building a data centre in Inverness, but they are very much a SME company, the emphasis on small.
    A data centre would require a huge investment in fibre throughout the region as well as down the A9, and if that did happen then a data centre in the central belt or elsewhere are going to be offering better deals, the Inverness plan is all about getting grants but will be pie in the sky rather than a cloud solution.
    There hasn’t been a real Highland wide industry since the herring and that disappeared nearly a century ago!

19. Brian Turner on July 12th, 2009 10:35 am

    I don’t think the success of an Inverness data-centre would be dependent on a super-fast fibre internet connection – not at present.

    There are a number of datacentres across the UK, and each tends to see a cottage industry of SME’s move in, based on offering hosting/design/development.

    My expectation would be that such a cottage industry would have plenty of potential around here.

    Additionally, buildings such as the old community centre appear to be pretty close to Nairn’s telephone exchange, and the installation of a fibre connection from that building to the exchange could present a real opportunity for turning the community centre into a modern business centre for IT-based services.

    There are also services such as bonded ADSL and leased line services which may potentially offer faster dedicated broadband connections for those businesses that need them – they are certainly used in normal copper wire systems down south. No idea how feasible they would be here, but is something I’m already trying to find out about.

    Either way, I think there is room for IT potential around the Moray Firth region – I’m easily given the impression that development so far has been limited not because of infrastructure issues, as much as low population density and the small local market resulting in this being a low priority.

    2c.

20. bill on July 12th, 2009 12:16 pm

    Most folk in the Highlands I talk to tend to get a 2MB download on Broadband at best, even though their ISP might promise 8MB. You can place your bets on too many users, contention, or a choked service to share out the bandwidth, either way you ain’t going to shift many zeros and ones between you and your datacentre over the current Broadband service
    True you could get a high-speed fibre going between the old community centre and the telephone exchange, but what would you do after that? You could turn to the two biggest providers up here, BT and THUS (Cable and Wireless).
    Cloud is pretty much out of the question due to the lack of routes. Fixed line, probably your best option but priced based per kilometer, quality of line/service, and speed. Even 10/20MB can be eye watering when you see the costs.
    Bonded ADSL, yeah dependant on your location and that of the exchange it is available, but when you opt for low contention your eyes will start popping rather than watering when you see the quotes.
    Satellite, too slow although still used extensively off shore. Wireless, even 3G coverage is minimal
    The Highlands has too low a population for the major, major investment needed for a fibre infrastructure. Even if a development the size of Sandown was built in every town/village in the Highlands the population/distance ratio is still too low/high to make fibre in the foreseeable future doable.
    Broadband had the copper already there, and even that required huge subsidy and also the links out into educational establishments on the back of the Pathways project, and that was some feat of comms engineering which was late in completion and way over budget
    Despite the growing population the Highlands just hasn’t got enough population to make huge investments in some areas viable, IT is one

21. Brian Turner on July 12th, 2009 3:39 pm

    Quite agree, Bill – high speed broadband for general domestic use is going to be a thorny problem for the Highlands.

    However, I think there are various high-speed solutions for SME’s that may yet be viable – and even normal speed can still work well for internet-based service providers such as webhosts, web designers, and developers, where speed isn’t a mission critical feature of their services.

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