Final permission has been given for a controversial housing development near the historic Culloden Battlefield, despite the new owner of the land casting doubt that it will go ahead as originally planned.
Campaigners say it is important to challenge the decision to prevent a precedent being set for such sites of importance and they plan to protest at the Scottish Parliament today.
Last year Highland Council refused Inverness Properties' plan to build 16 homes within half a mile of the battlefield at Viewhill Farm. But the developers appealed.
In January a Scottish government-appointed reporter indicated he thought planning permission should be granted with conditions.
"Approval was confirmed, however any party affected by the decision has six weeks to exercise a right of appeal to the Court of Session," a Scottish Government spokesman said. Highland Council has negotiated a settlement to pay some of the developers' £18,000 legal costs. .
Last month David Sutherland, the former executive chairman of Tulloch Homes, bought the land. He has farming interests in the area. He has said that the houses that will now be built will not be seen from the battlefield. A spokeswoman for the National Trust for Scotland, responsible for Culloden, said of this week's decision: "Clearly, the Trust is disappointed with this outcome."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article