Crieff development raises logistics issues

Sir, – I am dismayed. Perth and Kinross Council’s planning committee felt it necessary to meet collectively on their electronic devices to fast-track the massive housing project for Crieff’s southern edge. (“Hundreds of houses approved at virtual committee meeting”, The Courier, April 30).

Why did this development require such haste?

The inhabitants of Crieff are seeing their countryside pushed ever further away from their doors with increased development in all directions.

The 246-houses approved at the Broich will only add to the clutter of expansion to the last green-field site within the town boundary, and will carry a whole host of logistical problems.

There are three schools within

200 metres of the construction site, the B-class road was never intended to service a supermarket, schools, a proposed garden centre, a new village and a whole host of existing and longestablished businesses: including – and more crucially – a fire station which requires quick access for obvious reasons, as well as a council yard for snowploughs, etc.

Furthermore this is the main supply route to the council’s own recycling unit (400 metres away) and is used by heavy trucks and bin lorries, and townsfolk dumping rubbish; additionally the route is used constantly by agricultural vehicles, because it is the main artery through the valley of rural Strathearn.

The planning committee must have taken these factors into account, surely?

It is also questionable during these uncertain economic times, why they felt such a development was justified?

There are few employment opportunities in Crieff, a town that once had, but now lacks, many basic amenities.

This use of ‘affordable housing’ used in so many major planning applications, is a catchy statement. Does it not mean anything?

Finally, planners can go on signing off developments for good or bad, but the real question lies with the additional demands on the water supply and sewage treatment.

Loch Turret, a water supply gifted to the people of Crieff in the 19th Century by the Murrays of Ochtertyre, only has a certain capacity, and while everyone has been busy washing their hands of late, that capacity is always being reduced. Andrew Brock. Maxtone Terrace, Gilmerton, Crieff.