By By Profesor Mark Stephens, Chair, Save Our Landscapes
IN June 2015, the 11,500 objectors to plans by the building materials firm Cemex to extend a sand and gravel quarry into the buffer zone of the New Lanark World Heritage Site received the news they had been hoping for. Scottish ministers announced that they would save this area, which forms part of the Falls of Clyde Designed Landscape, from the bulldozer.
It was the Falls of Clyde’s ability to attract visitors that enabled Robert Owen to make New Lanark famous. Owen himself commissioned artists to represent New Lanark within this “sublime” landscape, which also attracted painters such as JM Turner and writers like Dorothy and William Coleridge.
Today the Falls retain their pulling power for international tourists, but also provide a place for family days out. Objection letters came not only from 35 countries, but all 73 constituencies represented in the Scottish Parliament and every ward in 15 adjoining local authorities from north of Glasgow to the Border.
After ministers refused the application, an appeal seemed unlikely. Unesco had welcomed Cemex’s “unequivocal” acceptance of the decision and its commitment to work with ministers “to ensure the ongoing best interests of the world heritage site”. But Cemex’s lawyers were already preparing for an appeal, submitting freedom of information requests and the company issued a barely veiled threat to withdraw from Scotland.
And appeal Cemex did. The case was returned to a Reporter, whose (unknown) recommendations are now with Ministers.
Some planners dismiss the original decision as being “political” – because ministers overturned the Reporters’ recommendation to allow the application. But the real question is how planners could have provided such defective advice to ministers in the first place.
Here are some examples: Unesco, having reconsidered the evidence, concluded that the buffer zone is a “vital component for the Outstanding Universal Value (OUV)” of the World Heritage Site. (OUV is what a site needs to gain World Heritage Status). Yet planners advised ministers that the area “contributes … nothing of significance to the OUV of New Lanark”.
Historic Scotland’s nomination document signed by the First Minister states that planning policy “prevents its [the quarry’s] expansion of working into the buffer zone”. Incomprehensibly, Reporters concluded: “We do not consider that it is fair to say that Historic Scotland gave assurances that quarrying would be prevented in the buffer zone.”
Planners accepted Cemex’s exaggerated predictions of minerals demand in 2014 only for output immediately to collapse at Cemex’s own quarry.
Presented with a survey that found that 73 per cent of visitors would be “less likely” to visit if the quarry went ahead, Reporters advised that “the impacts would not dissuade visitors unduly”. Not according to this visitor from the US: “I come to this country to visit natural places such as this. I spend money here. I would not come to see a quarry!” No wonder the New Lanark Trust warns of job losses and its financial viability if the quarry proceeds.
Ministers must reject Cemex’s application – and explain clearly why they have done so. They need to make it clear that, like the Scottish people, they value heritage both in and of itself, and because it plays a vital role in our economy, that a commitment to economic growth does not entail wholesale environmental degradation, that commitments given are commitments upheld, and that they won’t be bullied by multinational companies.
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