Feebly refereeing the contest is Aberdeenshire Council. The latest move from the Trump camp is to ask the council to consider using compulsory purchase orders to acquire the land belonging to the four householders. The resulting outrage produced 15,000 signatures on a petition supporting a motion that councillors should not use compulsory purchase powers to force residents from their own homes.
That raised the hopes of the householders and their supporters that the council would turn into an unlikely deus ex machina. Of course it was not to be. The sub-plot is the power play within the council itself.
Yesterday’s council meeting was the latest skirmish in what has become a long war of attrition since November 2007, when the local area committee originally rejected the plans, a decision subsequently reversed by the Scottish Government.
Donald Trump’s scheme was always going to be controversial because a significant part of the stretch of coastline he wants to turn into “the world’s best golf course” is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, categorised as the jewel in the crown of Britain’s shifting sand systems by Dr Jim Hansom, a reader in earth sciences at Glasgow University.
Even so, moving the dunes and building two golf courses is only one part of the proposal. It includes a luxury hotel, a holiday complex, plus 500 homes which are in defiance of the local plan. The council’s most significant act in this saga has been to halve the original number of houses.
This real-life version of Local Hero has made an international poster boy of the Trump Organisation’s most vociferous opponent, Michael Forbes. He has rejected a series of offers (including a job at the golf complex) to buy out his untidy smallholding, and the battle between him and Donald Trump has become both bitter and personal.
However, the prospect of losing the home in which you have raised a family and sunk the bulk of your income cannot be anything but personal. That was clear from fellow threatened homeowner David Milne’s emotional plea to councillors to consider what it is like not knowing if the next Christmas will be the last in the house he has lived in for 17 years.
Some councillors expressed sympathy for him, but the motion was defeated by 55-6 consigning the Menie residents to a long period of uncertainty and worry.
It is the lot of the councillor to decide between benefit to the wider community and benefit to the individual, and the dilemma is never more acute than in planning applications. Aberdeenshire councillors decided they could not make a decision without a full report. That is reasonable, but they have no plans to call for a report. Instead, they will allow negotiations between the two sides to continue and wait to see if they are asked to take compulsory purchase powers. This provides councillors with the mask of neutrality, but it cannot obscure their failure to recognise that a looming threat of a forced sale loads the dice in favour of the Trump Organisation, and not only because prolonged uncertainty will so diminish the quality of life for the Forbes, the Milnes and their neighbours that they are more likely to sell up.
Donald Trump insists that the golf courses are only viable if underpinned by the sale of the houses and a brisk trade in the holiday homes. In the current financial chill, demand for both will be diminished. The Loch Lomond Golf Club is evidence of that. A long wait, therefore, is hardly a commercial problem.
A little positive thinking might have prevented the deadlock. It is possible to construct a links course on an SSSI without destroying it, as the newly-opened Machrihanish Dunes course demonstrates.
Bullying local people out of the way is another version of destroying rare species. Michael Forbes’s reaction to the council decision was: “We’re not finished yet. The more he bullies, the worse I get.” No doubt Donald Trump shares that sentiment. Unless there is intelligent intervention, this engrossing drama is set to turn into tragedy.
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