By Iain Ramage – Press and Journal

Published: 25/01/2010

The Highland capital is a contender to be named the UK’s ugliest city. A panel of architects and designers included Inverness in the nominations for the UK-wide Carbuncle Awards.

It makes the list for the “monstrous” design of the city centre and “mushrooming suburban sprawl”.

Cumbernauld, Glenrothes and Coatbridge are among past recipients of the award, which used to be restricted to Scotland.

People in Inverness greeted the nomination with a mixture of anger and acceptance last night.

An awards spokesman said the Highland capital had been dubbed “Tulloch town” by some critics due to the local developer’s dominance and highlighted earlier “box-like monstrosities” in the city centre.

There was a degree of acceptance of the criticism yesterday – but optimism that things would change.

City provost Jimmy Gray said: “The 1960s Bridge Street buildings are probably not the most attractive, but to say Inverness is anywhere near the ugliest in the UK is utter nonsense. Most people who visit think it’s an extremely attractive place.”

His deputy, Alex Graham, agreed, insisting Inverness was an attractive city with tremendous charm.

Local SNP councillor John Finnie was equally surprised.

He offered to escort panel members around the city to show them “the many wonderful historic sites” Inverness has to offer.

Labour councillor John Holden said the council had inherited a lot of poorly designed buildings but had attempted to redress that.

Barrie Haycock, of local pressure group Planning Watch, said it was only a matter of time before Inverness was singled out for such an award. He said: “Unfortunately, Highland Council seems to have adopted a policy of chasing planning gain monies rather than developing integrated communities for the benefit of those who choose to live in the area.”

He added that millions of pounds were spent on the Inverness Streetscape project while surrounding streets remained pockmarked with decaying buildings.

Inverness South community council member Liz Gilchrist added: “In the haste to make Inverness a city, it has been developed into a sprawling mass, losing its identity.”

Thomas Prag, another Lib Dem city councillor, disputed the carbuncle tag but urged planners and colleagues to be more imaginative.

He said: “A lot of estates were built in a hurry because the demand was there. But we’re beginning to put that right and the Housing Expo is a hugely positive sign that we now know better.”

Urban Realm, the architectural magazine behind the awards, promotes the event as “a force for good and a real motivator” to transform cities. The winner will be decided by public vote.

Council chief makes clear public will pick up the tab if event does not go ahead

By jonny muir – Press and Journal

Published: 16/11/2009

The taxpayer will pick up the tab if a multimillion-pound exhibition showcasing environmentally friendly homes is cancelled, it has emerged.

Scotland’s Housing Expo is due to be held at Balvonie Braes, Inverness, in August 2010, but contingency plans have been prepared in case the event is abandoned or delayed.

In a report to councillors, Geoff Robson, Highland Council’s head of environment and development, said cancellation would lead to the liquidation of the Expo company, with “any outstanding debts being met from public sector resources”.

Identified risks that could lead to postponement of the 55-home event, which has already been delayed by a year, include failure to complete houses on time, low ticket sales or insufficient sponsorship.

Expo board chairman Jean Urquhart yesterday predicted “success, not disaster” and said a risk assessment had to be prepared to “reassure all our partners in the event of disaster”.

She said the prospect of cancellation was “simply not being contemplated”, but conceded there was a chance that the homes might not all be completed in time.

Despite the assurance, there were calls at the weekend to scrap the event, believed to be costing about £5million, to avoid it becoming a “white elephant”.

Barrie Haycock, a member of Inverness South Community Council, said: “There would be uproar from everybody if the event had to be cancelled.

“That money could have built a new school in Milton of Leys.”

Questioning the Expo’s potential to generate a budgeted £180,000 in ticket sales, he added: “Where they think these people are going to come from – given that large annual exhibitions with free admission are held in Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester and London – is a mystery to anyone who has an understanding of marketing.”

Liz Gilchrist, who sits on a community liaison group of councillors, Expo representatives, residents and ward managers, said organisers had been upbeat about the event’s prospects at their last meeting on October 14.

She said: “They were very positive and hoping to get the site up and running by April. The public sector is already peeved at cuts, and having to carry the can for this would rub salt in the wound.”

Inverness South councillor John Holden added: “There is a great danger of it not happening, and I fear the public purse will have to pay for what is someone’s badly thought-out dream.”

In a report to Wednesday’s planning, environment and development committee, Mr Robson said the Expo would be promoted by a 10-month travelling exhibition.

Budget forecasts indicate that, as well as generating £180,000 from ticket sales, the Expo must make £80,000 from sponsorship, £27,000 from parking charges and £20,000 from brochure sales.

The Expo, previously called the Highland Housing Fair, aims to showcase modern low-energy housing designs, stimulate the wider use of timber construction and promote the “creativity and quality of lifestyle” in the Highlands.

Read more: http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1484194#ixzz0XCmXpbQn

Planning Watch pictures of the forlorn and neglected site taken on 15th November 2009:

Entrance to the site

No evidence of house building commencement

Tulloch Homes announces new facilities for Milton of Leys

By jonny muir Press and Journal

Published: 10/04/2009

Developer Tulloch Homes has revealed plans to build a care home, a church, a primary school and shops on land at Milton of Leys, south of Inverness, which would be the first community facilities in the area.

But residents there have accused the developer of watering down the long-awaited community facilities after it slashed the amount of open space and upped the number of houses.

At present, the nearest school or shop is four miles away, which has made Milton of Leys the butt of jokes as its only existing community facilities are a postbox and a £10,000 “bandstand”.

Despite welcoming Tulloch’s proposals, residents say they are bemused that plans for community facilities mooted a year ago have been scaled down.

A substantial area that was once earmarked for open space with play facilities, including £100,000 of play equipment, has shrunk to a small wedge of land on the site’s periphery, even though it would overlook homes.

It is now envisaged that play facilities and a recreation area will be created within the grounds of the school, prompting concerns that the facilities will not be accessible outwith school hours.

Milton of Leys Residents’ Association chairman Gavin Norton said: “As a growing community of 600 homes, we are thrilled that we are going to get a primary school, but it can’t be at the expense of losing other community facilities.”

Mr Norton said there was also frustration that Tulloch had increased the amount of land allocated for housing on the community site from 1.5acres 12 months ago to 2.5acres now.

Residents learned about the proposals in a letter from Tulloch saying that an application had been submitted to Highland Council seeking permission for a “district centre, including retail, residential, care home, children’s nursery, community facility and primary school”, but it was not until the residents’ association obtained detailed drawings that the full extent of the changes emerged.

Mr Norton said: “Tulloch has done nothing wrong. They have provided all they need to provide. But the first reaction of most people will be: ‘what one earth is going on’?”

Milton of Leys community councillor Barrie Haycock said: “It smacks of Tulloch trying to increase its profit margin by putting as many homes on the plot as possible.”

Inverness Crime Prevention Panel chairman Jim Ferguson said there were signs that antisocial behaviour in Milton of Leys was on the rise, making it vital that community facilities are provided on the estate.

Tullochs were not available for comment.

Copies of the 26-page booklet, showcasing the Highland Housing Fair, were distributed at the Scottish Parliament in a move by the organisers to secure £4.75 million of public money for the event, due to be held next year at Balvonie Braes.

The brochure clearly stated that the site was chosen because it is close to Milton of Leys which has a primary school, church hall, local shops and public house, surgery, day care facilities and playing field.

However, after angry local residents and community leaders pointed out that the only community facility in the area is a postbox, housing fair organisers were forced to acknowledge their error.

A spokesman said that 500 copies were printed in time for a reception held at the parliament on 13th January.

Some had been handed out to those present, including MSPs, but the rest will now be withdrawn and destroyed.

“There was no intention to mislead anyone,” the spokesman said. “It was an error made in the haste of getting the booklet ready for the reception. The error in the booklet will be corrected for future print runs.”

Barrie Haycock, a local resident and chairman of Planning Watch UK, described the document, which contains the Highland Council logo, as “greatly misleading”.

“It is a complete fabrication of reality,” he said. “There are no community facilities with the exception of a postbox at Milton of Leys.

“It is an absolute disgrace that Highland Council could put its name to a document which is misleading to any person who takes the time and trouble to read it.”

The brochure at the centre of the controversy. Alasdair Allen

Bob Roberts, chairman of the Inverness South Community Council, was equally bemused by the publication, which states: “The site is well-located next to the Milton of Leys local centre which is easily accessible on foot.”

The council gave an additional £40,000 to the housing fair’s board last year. The money was to be used for a range of things including ticket and brochure printing plus advertising and promotion of the fair.

“Is this what they are using the money for?” Mr Roberts queried.

“I am absolutely outraged at this. The community at Milton of Leys has been totally misled by this. We have been promised these facilities for years and years and still they never appear — yet they seem to say they exist in this publication. We would love them to exist.”

Such was the concern about the lack of facilities in the rapidly-expanding suburb that a steering group, including Highland councillors, community councillors and other community representatives, was set up last year. A wish-list of priorities included a school and a multi-purpose community hall with sports facilities.

The housing fair, based on a Finnish model, is due to showcase 55 eco-homes which will be sold afterwards. The event, billed as the first of its kind in Scotland, had been due to be held in August but was postponed until 2010 due to the economic climate.

v.sweeney@inverness-courier.co.uk

Housing fair faces delay of 12 months

By Lorna Paterson – Inverness Courier

Published: 22 July, 2008

The site of the Highland Housing Fair at Balvonie Braes.

THE controversial Highland Housing Fair is facing another major blow — it is set to be delayed for a year.

The exhibition of sustainable housing, billed as the first of its kind in Scotland, had been scheduled to take place in August 2009 at Balvonie Braes in Inverness.

However, it emerged yesterday that growing financial pressures and a downturn in the housing market meant the event will not now be staged until 2010.

Architects and developers from the south were briefed on the latest developments in Perth last week, while developers from the Highlands will be informed on Friday at a meeting in Inverness.The board will then meet to make a final decision although Councillor Jean Urquhart, chairwoman of the Highland Housing Fair board, admitted delaying the event was already looking like the most likely outcome.

She confirmed some developers involved with the project were facing financial difficulty and rather than putting pressure on them, the board would be making the recommendation to its partners.

In the worst case scenario she anticipates the delay to be for 12 months.

However, an on-line architects’ website said there were fears the project, led by Highland Housing Alliance, would lose momentum, particularly if it was postponed for more than a year.

Barrie Haycock, chairman of campaign group Planning Watch UK, while criticising organisers for not forecasting the impact of a declining housing market, also remained sceptical over whether the fair would now go-ahead.

For the event to take place in 2010, he said, the new homes would still need to be built next year, but with experts predicting it to be two years before the housing market recovers he sees this as unlikely. “It was obvious that any downturn in the housing market would put the project at risk,” he said.

He claimed it had collectively landed the tax payer with an enormous bill out of the rush to force it through the planning process.

Inverness MP Danny Alexander said it was a reminder of what impact the global credit crunch was having on the Highlands. “This is very disappointing,” he said. “The fair would have made a great contribution to the Highlands in terms of leading new ideas on how homes can be developed.

Councillor Urquhart (Wester Ross, Strathpeffer and Lochalsh) explained there had been no public announcement about the delay because it was still in consultation with developers and architects.

The housing fair, on an area of green-wedge land, will showcase the best in housing design, innovation and technology.

It has been dogged with controversy with allegations over the conduct of planning officers and unacceptable land deals playing their part but Councillor Urquhart stressed the event would go ahead.

“It makes me angry that people see this as some kind of trumped up nonsense that doesn’t need to happen. There is absolutely no suggestion this will be a cancellation,” she added.

l.paterson@inverness-courier.co.uk

Wilson’s Weekly Wrap

27 Jun 2008

Highland Housing – Fair?

On the surface, things seem to be going not too badly at the moment for the Highland Housing Fair, given the perverse local opposition encountered at the outset of the project and the high drop out rate of developers who found innovation and profit on a single house plot to be incompatible concepts. Down at the coalface, however, a number of the selected architects are finding the going considerably tougher.

Time is flying, and deadlines for Building Warrant applications, for example, are being missed due to the shifting economic times in which we live. Several of the projects are still without either client or developer, never mind a contractor, and with building work for most projects scheduled to be on site by late Autumn, some critical decisions need to be made at a more strategic level if we are not to see a half-constructed built landscape when the Fair opens its doors to the public next August.

A number of the project designs are predicated on imported components such as massive timber panels, now made infinitely more expensive by the £’s poor showing against the €uro and without significant alteration at this late stage, the houses may simply fail to emerge. Obviously the credit crunch was not on anyone’s radar when the idea of the Fair was first mooted, but life is not as it was a year ago and the project sponsors need to radically – and rapidly – revise the business plan if the Fair is to be a success.

In Finland, the first Housing Fairs were publicly-funded with small towns competing for the privilege to build: the model used here presumed that developers could be encouraged to innovate (without subsidy) and even profit from the construction of a single housing unit, a questionable approach anyway given the concept’s first outing in Scotland.

Now that the tectonic plates of banking have shifted inexorably to a position of financial denial to housing developers, the Fair’s initiators at government and public agency level need to dig deep into their pockets to make sure the project does not become an architectural disaster zone: should the project fail, there will be no second chance to learn from the experience. And, be assured, as the various previously-interested parties cover their tracks, it will be the architects that will end up carrying the can for their supposedly un-fundable designs. The reputational damage to the profession just doesn’t bear thinking about.

Wilson’s Weekly Wrap

http://www.architecturescotland.co.uk/news/685/Wilson’s_Weekly_Wrap.html

4 Jul 2008

Highland Housing Fair, Part Two

It’s not often I get to see such immediate impact from something I’ve written and in truth it was probably more serendipity than prescience on my part, but following my ‘warning light’ comments last week about next year’s Highland Housing Fair in Inverness, the organisers seem to have taken my advice to heart and moved with commendable rapidity to postpone the event by a year. This is far from being a bad thing – the number of developers unable to raise bank finance for their individual projects was reaching a dangerously high level and the people responsible for the Fair have made the only prudent move possible in the circumstances. Far better to delay than to fail ignominiously and in any case the reasons for the postponement can be readily understood by all. What developer was going to proceed – even had they been able to secure the necessary funding – with construction at current Inverness price levels when the bottom is dropping out of the housing market and likely to pummel the post-Housing Fair sales values?

That said, invoking Plan B can only be seen as a necessarily reactive move and the need for a well thought through Plan C is now pressing. With a shade more time on the delivery side of the project, the need to reduce construction costs without diminishing the design quality of the individual houses needs some real creative thinking. Consideration could, for example, be given to the implementation of a professional sponsorship programme focused on in-kind provision of materials and products for all of the houses planned for the site. Hardly complicated, it is one of the few routes to overall cost reduction that are available in the current economic climate, but it will require co-coordinated – and speedy – action rather than allowing the projects to individually stand or fall. 2010 is not that far away.

Highland Housing Fair Postponed for a Year

4 Jul 2008

steven.raeburn@carnyx.com

The Highland Housing Fair, billed as the first event of its kind in Scotland to showcase house designs of the future, has been unexpectedly postponed.

The event, scheduled to kick off in Inverness in a year’s time, was intended to be a showpiece event where over 50 conceptual, sustainable houses would be on display, will now take place in August 2010.

The downturn in the property market, the poor prospects for the resale of the homes to be constructed, and a lack of finance have been blamed for the postponement.

“A recommendation will be made to the Highland Housing Fair board to delay the Fair from August 2009 to August 2010, in recognition of the economic climate and the shortage of finance available to realise the ambitions of the developers who are committed to the project,” the organisers said in a statement.

“The recommendation will be made at the meeting of the Highland Housing Fair board which will take place in August 2008.”

It had been planned that the houses constructed for the fair would be available to buy, to become a “living community” once the fair ended.

Writing exclusively for architecturescotland.co.uk, Peter Wilson speculated that fear of the declining property market may have prompted the postponement.

“Far better to delay than to fail ignominiously and in any case the reasons for the postponement can be readily understood by all,” he writes.

“What developer was going to proceed – even had they been able to secure the necessary funding – with construction at current Inverness price levels when the bottom is dropping out of the housing market and likely to pummel the post-Housing Fair sales values?”

Front line crews working for the Scottish Ambulance Service (SAS) allege that the charity’s ambulances are covering up for a shortage of full-time vehicles and warn that although trained to administer medical treatment, Red Cross personnel are not qualified to deal with all 999 calls.

The SAS confirmed the Red Cross was sent to incidents but insisted the organisation was providing an additional, not a replacement, service.

David Forbes, Unison’s regional convener for the ambulance service, said the public had a right to know what was happening.

“When the ambulance service in the division has been really stretched the Red Cross comes in to help,” he said. “It has been used when the SAS has been short of crews and the Red Cross have been working in Inverness on and off for some time.

“Either the SAS will ring the Red Cross or it will call and ask if the ambulance service needs any help, and it has been out on the road responding to calls.

“The Red Cross would say it is a professional organisation but it offers nowhere near the same level of care as a properly trained ambulance crew.

“They are first responders. The Red Cross will be at a road traffic accident but it hasn’t got the level of skills, competency and comprehension that our members have. It has been used for drug overdoses and road accidents and is covering more than it should be.”

The allegations came as MSPs expressed concern about the running of the SAS during a debate at Holyrood yesterday. Labour’s health spokeswoman Margaret Curran said staffing shortages had left employees under serious strain and considering industrial action while Ross Finnie, for the Lib-Dems, said the public had serious misgivings about aspects of the service.

Health minister Nicola Sturgeon responded by promising to consider any evidence about problems with the SAS but ruled out an external inquiry.

Sam Kennedy, the SAS’s Inverness-based general manager for the North and West Division, denied the Red Cross was used to plug any gaps in the ambulance service locally.

“That is simply not true,” he said. “Red Cross volunteers attend local emergency calls so that they can provide immediate life-saving first aid until an ambulance arrives. Under the first responder scheme, Red Cross volunteers, particularly in rural areas, are notified of emergency calls received. These are people highly trained by the NHS.”

A Red Cross spokeswoman confirmed its volunteers could attend all types of emergencies after the charity signed a contract with the SAS in 2006.

“If we are the nearest asset to the incident we will get the call from the SAS,” she said. “We have a memorandum of agreement with the ambulance service but the union’s claims about plugging gaps is not the understanding we are working to.

“The incidents we are called out to are not specified and that could be road accidents but an SAS ambulance always attends the scene as well. We don’t have a list of incidents we wouldn’t attend and we are not sent instead of an ambulance.”

The Red Cross did contact the ambulance service to find out if its assistance was required, the spokeswoman added, but the charity was not paid for providing the service.

However, Highlands and Islands Conservative MSP Mary Scanlon was shocked to hear Red Cross volunteers had been used for emergencies.

“A paramedic is highly skilled, trained and experienced,” she said. “The Red Cross does a wonderful job in first aid but it is unfair to expect them have the level of training and experience that paramedics have.

“The Red Cross, which is a voluntary organisation, should not have to take on this responsibility and the public does not expect it to be answering 999 calls.”

h.ross@inverness-courier.co.uk