Stagecoach boss Souter wins fight for access road
STAGECOACH tycoon Sir Brian Souter has won a battle to build a road and bridge near his mansion after assuring neighbours he is not planning a housing development at the site.
The businessman is to have a new access route built that will link to fields he owns at the back of his home in Perth, demolishing a garage and building a timber bridge over a burn.
Concerns were initially raised by local residents who said they feared the new road could lead to houses being built at the site, known as Bellwood Fields, which would impinge on their privacy.
Locals and council officials had also raised fears that the construction work could lead to loss of trees at the site and threaten wildlife including deer, red squirrels, bats and birds.
But Sir Brian’s representatives said only one small tree would be removed along with some hedging, which would be replaced.
Six neighbours objected to the original proposals after they were submitted to Perth and Kinross Council in February but Sir Brian allayed their concerns by
‘Fears of residents appear unfounded’
submitting a new planning application insisting the route would be used only by tractors to carry out agricultural work on the fields.
Sir Brian, one of Scotland’s richest men, bought Bellwood House, a Georgian mansion, and its surrounding land for more than £1.3million in 2010. Perth and Kinross Council has now approved the access route after no objections were received to his new application.
In a statement submitted to council officials, Sir Brian’s planning agents said: ‘The applicant simply wants to create an access for maintaining the fields and ditches that he owns. The land which requires to be maintained now lies within the identified greenbelt around Perth.
‘As such, any fears that local residents may have about that particular land being developed appear unfounded as its greenbelt status and the increased environmental protection of the land means that there is no prospect of development being accepted on that land.’
A spokesman for Sir Brian said: ‘It is not an application to build, but to put in a roadway for which Sir Brian has right of access in his title deeds.’