More houses and traffic making Oban’s back road ‘dangerous’
sneil@obantimes.co.uk ‘Busy’ rural roads are getting ‘close to capacity’, and more ‘dangerous’, as more planning applications for houses are approved, but council officers cannot set limits without risking appeals, councillors heard on Wednesday.
Oban community councillor Duncan Martin raised a recurring issue regarding planning applications and comments from the roads department, at the Oban, Lorn and the Isles Area Committee.
‘There seems to be an established policy that roads do not comment on planning applications, unless they are likely to generate a substantial increase in traffic - 10 per cent I believe,’ Mr Martin said.
‘This allows repeated independent applications to be made along a road, and this particularly came up with the back road to Connel, without any consideration of the cumulative effect on traffic.
‘In the last 10 or 15 years a substantial number of houses have been built along that road. It has also, with increasing congestion in Oban, been quietly, widely used by people coming in from the north and wanting to avoid Dunbeg and the queue on the Bealach an Righ.
‘That road is getting increasingly busy and there is yet another application for a house along that road.’
Mr Martin wished to know if this was a policy matter for councillors to challenge, or an operational matter decided internally by council officers.
Councillor Roddy McCuish, a member of the council’s planning committee, and a former policy lead for roads, said: ‘I am sure it is policy, but I have seen comments from the roads department not just on the intensification of traffic, but on sightlines and safety issues as well. So they do comment, and it’s just not on intensification. ‘Community councils have
a tremendous opportunity, because they are statutory consultees, but I’ve seen very little from any community council supporting an application. Usually the only time we hear is when they’re objecting.’
Mr Martin replied: ‘There has to be some mechanism by which the roads department consider whether some of our single track back roads are now getting so busy, and dangerously busy, because that road is shared by people walking dogs and people on bicycles, and whether they need to review their policy with regard to additional housing on roads, given the capacity of that road, because we are advised it’s becoming increasingly dangerous.
‘There should be some kind of assessment. It’s happened elsewhere. We’ve got the problem of the entrance to Soroba, because no matter what anyone does in Soroba it’s not going to tip the threshold, and yet we all know the junction with Soroba, between McCaig Road and the main trunk road, is grossly overcrowded.’
Councillor Kieron Green, a member of the council’s planning committee, said: ‘I can understand people’s views that the roads are getting close to capacity. I do wonder how easy it is to actually put in firm limits, because there is a very definite principle in planning applications that each planning application has to be considered on its own merits.
‘If we were to try and put in fixed criteria to say that there is an absolute limit, I just wonder if the planning department is going to come back saying: “We feel there’s a risk that this would just open us up to appeals, and it would increase the number in the first instance of local review bodies and then to the Scottish Government”.’
‘There is a very definite principle in planning applications that each one has to be considered on its own merits.’ – Kieron Green