COUNCILLORS have thrown out plans for a holiday village to be built on the site of the battle of Culloden in a move which has delighted campaigners.
The plans for the 13-lodge holiday village were unanimously rejected by Highland Council after concluding that the application did not meet any one of the conditions required for a development on the Culloden conservation area to be allowed.
Inverness Paving had been seeking permission to build the village on the site where historians say the British army prepared ahead of the battle with the Jacobites in April 1746.
After the first application was rejected in May 2019, a second was submitted.
Speaking yesterday, local councillor Carolyn Caddick said that nothing in the new plans suggested “anything different from the last application”.
“There have been three to four thousand objections, including the two community councils, and Scottish ministers say if we move to approve they may call it in,” she added.
Caddick, a LibDem, seconded a motion from the SNP councillor Ron MacWilliam calling for the plans to be refused.
The motion then received unanimous support from the other members of the Highland Council’s South Area Planning Committee.
MacWilliam said Culloden was a “site of national and international significance ... a major worldwide name and it needs to be protected”. He went on: “As a planning committee, we have a role in doing that.
"Culloden is a battlefield, is a war grave, it’s a place of quiet and it is a place we have to attempt, to the best of our ability, to keep the integrity of the site and the area around about it intact, so that people now and in future generations can enjoy it, explore it and consider its history.”
The holiday village plan, which was also to include a cafe, shop, laundry and restaurant, was based on the conversion of the existing Treetops equestrian centre, which has “little intrusive impact”, according to the National Trust for Scotland (NTS).
READ MORE: AUOB to fight plans to build holiday village on site of Battle of Culloden
All Under One Banner (AUOB) deferred a planned protest after the council meeting was delayed to December 8, saying they were prepared to pressure ministers at Holyrood to intervene should the permission have been granted.
AUOB’s Neil Mackay said he was "delighted" that they would no longer have to protest, adding that it seemed “very clear that the conservation area has been protected, defined and reaffirmed” by the rejection of the plans.
He said the council had seen the amount of attention that the scandal had brought, from campaigners locally and nationally, and been made to “stand to attention” as the prospect of “protesters at their door really did rattle their cages”.
AUOB had joined the Group to Stop Development at Culloden (GSDC) and the NTS in condemning the planning application.
GSDC called the Highland Council’s rejection a “courageous” decision, and called on “conservation-minded organisations to work together in finding a definitive solution to this seemingly never-ending torrent of new and repeated applications for developments on this site of national importance”.
Phil Long, chief executive of NTS, commended the “excellent and wise” decision, adding: "We have to come together and find a middle way that does not prevent reasonable and appropriate development while preserving the essence of this sacred, internationally important place.”
Mackay also defended AUOB’s decision to become involved in the Culloden protests, after some critics called for them to “stick to independence”.
“What is independence?” Mackay asked. “It’s Scotland’s land, resources, income, it’s the decision making of the Scottish people. This is a very linked issue.
“[One of the things] you would want to come of independence is to protect Scottish heritage, whether that’s the Battle of Culloden or other sites of special historical significance.
“The idea that they’re not linked is ridiculous and the idea that we shouldn’t be doing what we can be doing just now to make a difference is silly, it’s a silly attitude.”
The Battle of Culloden marked the end of the Jacobite rising and was the last pitched battle fought on British soil.
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