The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Plans for new £16.5m Fair City primary
Multi-millionpound proposals for a new Perth primary school have been submitted to planning chiefs.
The £16.5 million two-storey building will replace ageing schools at North Muirton and Balhousie.
Perth and Kinross Council says the still-to-benamed primary will offer state-of-the-art learning for nearly 500 pupils and help meet a target of zero carbon emissions by 2045.
Scottish Government funding for the project was secured in December, as part of a £1 billion programme to benefit 50,000 students across Scotland.
A planning application has now been submitted and will go to public consultation.
The plan details how the school will be built in the grounds of North Muirton Primary at Uist Place, while that school remains operational.
The council’s lifelong learning convener Caroline Shiers said: “This is a major step along the road to seeing the delivery of the new school to serve the communities of Balhousie and North Muirton and I am looking forward to seeing the new-build progress.
“The school will serve the needs of local children and their families for many years to come and will provide state-of-the-art facilities which are much needed within the local area.”
The plans were praised by local Conservative MSP Murdo Fraser, who said: “It demonstrates the ambition of the council and has to be welcomed.”
The closure of Balhousie proved controversial, with SNP councillors at the forefront of a campaign to keep it open.
The party’s City North councillor John Rebbeck
said: “Whilst the preference would still have been for Balhousie Primary to be refurbished, we are where we are.
“The crucial point now is that this new school takes account and respects both communities.”
He said that Balhousie should not be closed before the new school at North Muirton is ready.
City Centre Conservative councillor Chris Aherne said: “The new school will replace two schools that are no longer fit for purpose, and are also inefficient in terms of maintenance and costs.
“I commend the developers in their vision and their consultation with the public and their designs.”
Plans have been submitted to extend operations at a controversial quarry in Fife until 2040. A full planning application has been lodged with Fife Council to extend the extraction of dolerite rock at Lomond Quarry, on the outskirts of Leslie.
Owners Skene Group Ltd, who have operated at the site since 1981, already have a licence to extract sand and gravel and in 2009 were granted permission to blast for dolerite rock until 2032.
The company is now seeking to extend that by a further eight years.
The company has faced opposition over much of the past decade from many residents living close to the site, over concerns about the long-term effects of blasting at the quarry to residents’ homes.
Fife Council ordered an independent review into all aspects of operations at Lomond Quarry in 2013 following a campaign waged by residents, which resulted in new operating conditions and blast monitoring at the site.
Now, following a consultation in 2020, the firm has revealed detailed proposals to extend blasting into agricultural land north-east of the site, further away from residents’ homes, which would reduce disruption to the village.
Long-term plans detail how the firm also plans to restore an area of the
quarry, introducing landscaping, a grassland and the eventual flooding of the quarry bed to create a new reservoir.
The proposal, if approved, would create 15 new jobs at the site as well as safeguard the future for 130 employees.
The operators also outline plans that would end blasting in areas of the
quarry closest to the village, limiting operations at the southern area to the extraction of sand and gravel only.
In its environmental impact assessment, the company said its application for an extension to operations was to “reduce potential negative impacts on residents and mitigate the impacts of
operations” on the village as a whole.
John Wincott, a member of the Lomond Quarry liaison committee and chairman of Leslie Community Council, said the community council would scrutinise the proposals in full before completing its submission as part of the planning process.