It can be no surprise that the membership of Helensburgh Community Woodland Group [HCWG] is up 40% to 90 people, given its resolute opposition to the devastation of local amenity spaces by developers bent on a fast buck at all costs – to other people.
At a well-attended Annual General Meeting last Monday, 28th April, HCWG members voted unanimously to step up the Group’s campaign to protect two valued areas of open space, still threatened by local developers and landowners, Margery Osborne and Thomas Paterson.
This too, can be no surprise, with HCWG known for its resourcefulness, determination and persistence. This vote signals that not only is HCWG going nowhere, it is about to make its presence more keenly felt where it needs to be – amongst renegade developers and with Argyll and Bute planning officers.
The planners resolve to implement statutory planning regulations is famously erratic; and, although many sympathise with them for the extent to which they suffer persistent interventions of questionable propriety from sources we have previously identified, the public patience is running out.
The meeting last Monday began with a fascinating and wonderfully illustrated talk from local archaeologist Fiona Baker about the history of Clan MacAulay and how Ardencaple Castle along with its surrounding Clan lands in the Helensburgh area had evolved from the thirteenth century until the Castle was finally demolished by the Navy in the late 1950s. Fiona explained just how important the wooded areas around the Castle had been to its setting and showed how many key features remain or can be discerned in the landscape even today.
After a short break, David Adams, HCWG’s Convenor, reported that the membership of the Group had increased in 2013 by 40% increase in 2013 to a total of 90 and that income for the year had more than doubled. He thanked members for all their support, which he said had proved crucial to the continued retention of the Open Space Protection Areas at Cumberland Avenue and Castle Woods.
On Cumberland Avenue, the meeting strongly backed the direct action recently taken by Argyll and Bute Council to enforce the Tree Replacement Notice, with which the owners had refused to comply. Members expressed their determination to see the removal of the unauthorised building materials stored on the site as well as the unauthorised boundary fence on to Cumberland Avenue.
The meeting resolved to ask Argyll and Bute Council to take action under Section 179 of the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997 to require all logs, tree stumps etc and other remnants from the 2011 felling to be removed from the Cumberland Avenue site; and, under Part 1 of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003, to ensure that safe and unrestricted public access to the land is restored.
On Castle Woods, members heard that although the Group’s application to the Armed Forces Community Covenant in 2013 for £241,000 to purchase, enhance and manage the woods had been described by the Grants Award Board as ‘excellent’, it has been turned down because Mrs Osborne and Mr Paterson had refused even to discuss a sale.
Although Castle Woods is protected by a Tree Preservation Order, designated as an Open Space Protection Area, identified as a Key Environmental Feature and with the northern part also designated in its own right as a Local Nature Conservation Site, the two landowners still have a live planning application to cut the woods down and build a 72 unit housing estate there.
Members heard that Grants Award Board had invited HCWG to resubmit the funding application ‘once the issues of ownership of the land and the transfer to your Community Woods Group is firm’. As a result, the meeting voted, again unanimously, to call on Mrs Osborne and Mr Paterson to grant HCWG a 12 month option to purchase Castle Woods at Open Market Value and invited local councillors, businesses and residents to support this request.
There remains the possibility of a hostile buy out, which, under the Land Reform Act, the Scottish Government was prepared to contemplate in the case of the wishes of the islanders of Lewis to buy the neglected Pairc Estate there. The owner of Pairc has recently agreed to a sale, avoiding the uncomfortable and potentially dangerous precedent of a hostile buy out. However, the fact that the Scottish Government was far from opposed to the notion is a matter to be tucked away for future use, if necessary.
Note: the photograph above is of one of the piles of stumps and debris that the landowners have deliberately left at Cumberland Avenue, Helensburgh and on which HCWG is asking the Council to serve a Section 179 notice to get them cleared up. We will report on the council’s response, when it comes.
