Unanimous approval for motorhome park
A divisive plan to build a £1.3 million community hub and motorhome park on playing fields in Port Ellen has been unanimously approved by councillors, after none of the 37 objectors turned up to the virtual hearing.
All eight councillors present at Argyll and Bute Council’s planning, protective services, and licensing committee (PPSL) on Thursday March 24 voted in line with council officers to approve the plan, despite no letters of support from the public.
‘I’m disappointed none of the objectors have used their right to appear before this committee,’ said the PPSL chairman councillor David Kinniburgh. ‘I find that quite extraordinary, although I notice that a lot of the objections have come from off the island.’
Many objections had Port Ellen addresses, The Oban Times can confirm.
The applicant is South Islay Development (SID), a community-led organisation based in Ramsay Hall, set up in 2011 to ‘work with local people to make Port Ellen a better place to work, live and play’.
It owns and runs the community filling station and mobile home service point and, in 2017, took on Port Ellen’s 16-acre playing fields and pavilion. Its keystone project, built up over ‘three years of extensive community consultation’, is regenerating the site into a new single-storey community hub where the demolished old pavilion stood, with a relocated play area, three spectator shelters, five storage containers for sports equipment and ebike rental, plus 22 car parking spaces.
Most controversially, the plan increases motorhome parking from four hook-up spaces to 12, plus a toilet/shower/ laundry block, waste disposal site and electric charge point beside the fuel station.
Towards the £1.3m cost, SID secured £746,233 from the Scottish Government's Regeneration Capital Grant Fund, plus £250,000 from Glenmorangie Distillery and the North Highland Initiative. Argyll and Bute Council has just granted £50,000 to help plug the gap.
The Port Ellen Playing Fields project aims to address the ‘dire lack of facilities for Islay’s growing numbers of motorhomes, plus help solve its problems of nuisance parking, litter and dumped sewage, as well as generate revenue to sustain the whole 16-acre site’. Council officers had recommended the plan for approval, but the high number of objections triggered a local hearing set for Thursday March 24. Objectors argued it was an unwanted ‘profit-driven’ and ‘over-priced ‘vanity project’, dangerously located next to an, at times unattended, fuel station.
‘Skye has been ruined culturally and socially by encouraging tourism to the point of excess,’ summed up one: ‘Do not let that happen to Islay.’
‘The playing fields were left for the community of Port Ellen as an outdoor space, not a car park, motorhome and storage facility,’ said another, adding it should not be changed into ‘a commercial site primarily for tourism’.
The plan exposed a tension between the needs of islanders and tourists, and tested councillors on which side they sat, just weeks before May’s local election.
At the start of the hearing, Islay councillor Alastair Redman, Independent, Kintyre and the Islands, removed himself after declaring an interest. He said: ‘I have obviously been busy canvassing my local ward. Elections are upon us. I have had many conversations about this matter with many of my constituents, some for, some against. Such conversations may prejudice my decision and I think, out of fairness to both the applicant and the objectors, I should declare an interest and take no further part in this meeting.’
SID’s director John Findlay said a number of organisations will want to use the new pavilion, given the village’s Columba Hall is ‘sadly falling into disrepair’.