Planning

Highland Council are using new legislation called a Masterplan Consent Area (MCA) to fasttrack the development at Essich Road.

The environment and Infrastructure Committee who voted to put forward the development on Essich Road agreed to sieve potential locations using numerous criteria which included:-

• Has the site benefited from a development plan allocation or a planning permission?” 

The development site on Essich Road has NOT been included in the Councils Long Term Development Plan nor has it been allocated planning permission.

 The Highland Council have gone so far as to say in a report “Highland is the only council considering the use of an MCA for housing development on land that is neither allocated in the development plan nor has a previous or existing planning permission. As such there is a risk of legal challenge.” 

• Does the site lie outwith SEPA mapping defined future flood risk areas?”

The site on Essich Road floods badly.  The Essich and Torbreck Community Association have compiled comprehensive  evidence which can be accessed by the clicking here.

• Is there any evidence of justified community support for, or opposition to, development of the site? 

 There has been no engagement with the community to understand the level of support or opposition to the Mastreplan before the process commenced.

The Highland Council called for a list of development sites in early  2025 which produced 250 potential sites, from which a list of 9 was put to the council with a recommendation to proceed with 3. (Embo, Ardersier and Essich road).

On numerous occasions the council have been asked to evidence how they arrived at the three MCA sites from their initial list of 250 and to show the scoring mechanism was applied to do this.  The council have openly admitted that no scoring mechanism was used and have, it would appear, selected three sites that they feel they can progress with minimum opposition. 

In addition, the only constraining factor that was identified for the Essich Road site was “potential flooding”.  No mention was made of either “Trunk Road capacity” or “School capacity” which where both identified as constraints for a similar shortlisted site at Welltown of Leys.  Clearly this represents inconsistency in how the Essich site was portrayed to members of the Economy & Infrastructure Committee.

This fails to show any strategic planning by the Council in how Inverness is being developed.

 Furthermore, in the 2024 Local Development Plan the Highland Council themselves ruled out development on the Essich Road site for the following reasons:

• Well beyond the city edge, in the countryside

• Would not represent a rounding off of the settlement boundary.

• Not needed in quantitative terms

• Out of settlement location

•  Would require far more extensive extensions to service locations

• Longer (+probably less sustainable car borne) travel to local facilities.

•  Has rural characteristics, with small clusters of detached housing on the limits of the promoted site and Essich Road becoming single track beyond the city limits leading to the site.

• Would appear as an incongruous encroachment into the countryside

• No defensible boundaries to the south.

The Essich and Torbreck Community association have prepared a Strategic Review of the panning and decision making process. which can we viewed by clicking the link below.

The proposed development is fundamentally in the wrong location. 

In a previous reference to Essich Road, the planning department was unsupportive citing that it would take strategic growth of the City in a new unsustainable direction…

Essich Road is located on the South West side of the City with the major job creation at the Free port being to North on the Deephaven/Nigg corridor or East of Inverness, principally at Castle Stuart/Airport/Ardersier.  

The council themselves have admitted that Inverness East is the optimum location for development and that this would give them more than enough housing and land supply. The Highland Council have advised that this is being held back by Transport Scotland commitment to fund that East Link Road. 

Pressure should be put on the Scottish Government to progress the East Link as this will allow the Council to ensure its developments have a clear strategic direction.

Simply picking adhoc sites as short term fixes fails to show any sense of strategic planning and cohesive thinking.  This proposal is being used to try and implement a short-term fix to a long problem.  Efforts should be focused on a strategic approach that delivers the Councils long term vision.

In 2010 the Highland Council was a contender to be shamed as the country's most dismal city in the inaugural UK Carbuncle awards.  Inverness was singled it out for its "mushrooming suburban sprawl".    Let’s learn from our mistakes and not continue to progress developments which only add to the city’s urban sprawl.