Round-up of today’s council decisions

An eventful Kincardine and Mearns Area Committee today. Here are some of the topics we discussed, ranging from grants to planning applications and school rolls.

Newtonhill Community Hall Association is being given a grant of £2000 for a new server and power supply for the Bettridge Centre. The total cost is £4100.

Newtonhill Out of School Club was awarded a grant of £725.94 to purchase chairs and a trolley, replacing the current chairs which are in a poor condition. Total cost will be £1200.

Solstice Nurseries is being awarded £5000 towards the £80,000 cost of a garage, storage space, workshop and heated potting shed at its wholesale nursery on the South Deeside Road. The social enterprise provides placements for people with or recovering from mental illness. They had applied for £7000, but my motion to support this was defeated by six votes to four.

Aberdeen Aeromodellers Flying Club was given a £1575, half the cost of a project to repair the ground near Banchory Devenick.

The Skateraw Fair was awarded £494, half the cost of purchasing a commercial barbecue, table and chairs, which will also be used by Newtonhill Village Association.

Some 97.1% of street lighting faults in Kincardine and Mearns are repaired within seven days.

Planning permission for demolition of an existing garage and erection of a double garage on Newtonhill Road, Newtonhill, has been turned down by the local review body. The grounds were that it would have had an overbearing and overshadowing impact on neighbouring properties.

New school roll forecasts show that Hillside School could be at 175% capacity in 2022. The 2018 roll will be 371 (the figures are based on September rolls), but the capacity is 350. Clearly something has to be done. In comparison Fishermoss School will be at 77% capacity in 2022, and Portlethen Primary 69%. Education officers are working on solutions, such as rezoning the catchment areas, or adding extra classrooms (Hillside was designed with this in mind). Out-of-zone requests are already being turned down. Another option is a reconfiguration to create more teaching space. I asked officers to provide updates on progress.

Plans for the erection of a workshop to the south west of the Newtonhill flyover were rejected by eight votes to three. The 12m high grey building would have been built next to West Monduff, and conditions would have been attached regarding noise and lighting. However the plans for the access road were designed so that long commercial articulated vehicles might have to either mount the pavement or overhang the centre line of the carriageway as they turned left to leave the site to head towards the Chapelton roundabout. This concerned me greatly and I moved that it be refused.

The reports before the committee can be found at http://committees.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/committees.aspx?commid=8&meetid=18836

Focus on the rural issues

Just home from an interesting meeting of North Kincardine Rural Community Council. A wide variety of issues. Here are a few which particularly caught my attention.
The community council decided it would not pursue inviting AWPR representatives to another meeting now that the project is in its final stages. Members and the dozen residents present felt it would not achieve anything.
Members will look favourably on an application for a grant from Banchory Devenick School to help with outings for the pupils. Similarly assistance will be given to the Portlethen Community Ambulance Association towards purchasing a new vehicle. Replacing the minibus which covers the area served by Portlethen medical centre will be in the region of £24,000. The community council will decide on the level of grants at a future meeting.
There was disappointment at the decision of a Scottish government reporter to grant planning permission for a biomass plant, house and associated development to the west of Cookney Church. The application had been refused by local councillors.
It was noted that Beannachar Camphill Community has applied for planning permissions for a single storey strawbale building at Banchory Devenick. The application says it will be a low carbon sustainable building constructed using bio‐renewable materials, with walls fashioned from locally grown straw and timber. More at https://upa.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=documents&keyVal=P219JHCALP400.
Concerns were raised by a resident about syndicates shooting on local land at night and the potential for a serious accident given that no warning signs had been erected. It is thought deer may have been the target, however local people use the area for recreation. The police have been informed.
The lack of progress with the Blairs development was raised. The Riverside of Blairs housing is being built, but no sign of progress with the main development, the community council heard. Would planning permission for the main plans time expire?
Many other matters were also discussed. Come along if you would like to know more! The next meeting is on 19 February in the school, starting at 7.30pm.

Missing bus service to return

Good news. The bus service round St Michael’s Road and St Ternan’s Road in Newtonhill will be restored from tomorrow (16 January).

It was inadvertently omitted from the timetable which was introduced last Monday.

Stagecoach said today: “I can only apologise for this omission. The code was missed as we pulled the timetable together finally and hence it was omitted. This has however now been corrected and the depot are preparing to ensure that the 0858 7B from Forest Park in Stonehaven serves St Michael’s Road on its route to Aberdeen and the 0855 7B from Aberdeen to Stonehaven does likewise.”

There was no mention of the afternoon journey, at about 3pm, in the email so it may run tomorrow. Or not. I’ll ask.

By the way, the service around St Michael’s Road is a hail-and-ride service. You can simply stop the bus anywhere on St Michael’s Road or St Ternan’s Road by putting out your hand to hail the bus. There is only one official bus stop, outside the primary school.

Stagecoach management is also open to considering whether there should be a more regular service round the Saints. But this would require sufficient usage. Would there be a demand to justify more buses?

Red light for culture and sport trust

Aberdeenshire councillors are being recommended by officers not to proceed with the setting up of an Aberdeenshire Culture & Sport Trust. The report will go before full council next Thursday.
The new trust was being set up to save roughly £1m a year through business rates and VAT savings, however responses from the Scottish Government and HM Customs & Excise show that these savings can no longer be achieved, and indeed it would be more costly to proceed.
The trust would have taken over responsibility for a range of services under an independent arms’ length board of trustees.
It is now proposed that the council seeks to improve its services in house.
The report, with full details, is available on the council website at http://committees.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/committees.aspx?commid=1&meetid=18733
UPDATE: Councillors agreed not to proceed with the arms-length trust. There is more at https://online.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/apps/news/release.aspx?newsid=4883

Netherley Road junction to close

The Netherley Road (the B979) is to be closed this weekend at its junction with the A90 at Stonehaven. This is to realign the slip roads and carry out surfacing.

The Evening Express has details: https://www.eveningexpress.co.uk/fp/news/local/route-to-close-and-diversions-in-place-for-awpr-roadworks-progrsses-goes/?utm_content=buffer3f389&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

No date for A90 Stonehaven bridge reopening

No good news yet on fully reopening the A90 at Stonehaven.

I have just been told by the Aberdeen bypass managing agent that the contractor is working hard to deliver the new Stonehaven junction structure as soon as possible, which when complete, will enable the A90 to return to two lanes in each direction. And bring to an end the tailbacks at peak hours.

Managing agent John Wilson writes: “The current lane restrictions on the A90 are required whilst work on the northbound carriageway section of the new A90 overbridge continue. Construction of the second half of the new bridge is already underway and Aberdeen Roads Ltd, the contractor for the project, has advised that the new bridge is planned to be complete during the current winter period. I would like to assure you that the construction team is working hard to deliver the new structure as soon as possible. Only once the bridge is complete will traffic at Stonehaven return to two lanes in each direction of travel.

“As with all complex civil engineering contracts of this scale, delivery and completion of certain elements of work are dependent on a variety of factors project wide including weather, design changes, scheduling or other works and availability of specialist resource for certain tasks. In the wider interests of the project the contractor needs to the balance these factors in order to keep the project on target. It is therefore not possible to confirm the exact completion date at this time.”

Separately I have heard that the contractors need a 10 day weather window to waterproof the bridge.

Meanwhile the traffic jams, particularly in the late afternoon and early evening, will continue.

Apologies for buses disruption

I have had a response this evening from Stagecoach about some of the problems when the new bus timetable was introduced yesterday.

Stagecoach North Scotland managing director Mark Whitelocks writes: “I am very disappointed and sorry that you have had a number of concerns raised with you following our timetable change on Monday.

“Having spoken with my colleagues it would appear that yesterday morning we very unexpectedly had three drivers report that they were unable to come to work. We do have spare drivers on duty each morning to cover for such eventualities but to have three drivers in our Stonehaven depot fail in this way in such a short space of time is highly unusual and did very regretfully result in some disruption to services whilst we re-positioned drivers from other depots and called other drivers into work to assist.

“I can only apologise for any inconvenience that has been caused by this.”

I had also raised with him the omission of the occasional bus service round St Michael’s Road and St Ternan’s Road in Newtonhill from the timetable (which has happened previously) and Mr Whitelocks tells me he needs to undertake some further investigation. He promised to come back to you on this as soon as possible.

China plastics ban won’t affect us. Yet.

I was asked by residents if the decision by China to cease accepting imports of waste plastic (as reported in the media:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42455378) will affect Aberdeenshire Council’s recycling arrangements. Not in the short term, I’m assured.

Aberdeenshire Council has a contract in place for the collection, sorting and onward reprocessing of our mixed recycling (which includes plastics). The contractor does not export this waste to China and therefore in the short term we will not be impacted by this ban.

However it is likely, in the medium term at least, that the increase in plastic products in the reprocessing markets will decrease the income for this material and therefore increase our costs. Council officers have contacted our contractor to ask them for their view on the potential impact of this ban and are waiting to hear back from them.

UPDATE, 11 January: I have just had it confirmed that the council’s contractor has not exported any plastics to China for the last five years and therefore this ban will not affect us.

Cookney house gets go-ahead

A house, biomass shed and timber yard may now be built at Cookney (to the east of the former church), the Scottish Government’s planning appeals division has decided.

Local councillors had previously turned down the application for planning permission, however the government’s reporter has concluded that “although the proposed development did not accord overall with the relevant provisions of the development plan, granting planning permission is still justified by material considerations relating to the forced relocation of the business by the construction of the AWPR.”

The reporter also said it was a finely balanced judgement.

You can read the full decision at https://www.dpea.scotland.gov.uk/CaseDetails.aspx?ID=118285