Spaceport plan splits Highland neighbours

Environment: Majority of respondents against hi-tech scheme

Plans for Britain’s first vertical-launch spaceport has attracted more than 500 public responses.

The survey deadline has now passed and 404 people have objected to the project while 111 are in favour.

The responses have seen neighbour pitted against neighbour and landowner against landowner but many objections have come from outwith the remote Sutherland area earmarked for the scheme.

Among the protesters are TV wildlife presenter Chris Packham who said the £17.3 million project was not worth the “destruction” of part of the Flow Country’s peat bog.

“We keep being told it’s fine, ‘you’re only losing a small bit here and there’,” he tweeted.

“It adds up and this proposed new spaceport in Scotland really isn’t worth the destruction of the carbon-rich peat bog it will be built upon.”

Also objecting is Scotland’s leading young environmentalist Finlay Pringle, 12, from Ullapool in Wester Ross – who counts Mr Packham and campaigner Greta Thunberg among his allies.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) has also objected, subject to a raft of conditions not being included in any permission.

“If any of the above conditions will not be applied, then please consider this representation as an objection,” it wrote.

Scotland’s largest private landowner, billionaire Anders Holch Povlsen, is among the objectors to the spaceport being built in the Highland area where he has an estate.

Mr Povlsen’s company Wildland Ltd has made a holding objection.

It has concerns over the potential ecological and landscape damage set against the “likely very limited benefits”.

However, nearby Altnaharra Estate has backed the scheme – saying the benefits outweigh any negatives – and warned of the area being controlled by Wildland.

“Melness and Tongue are especially vulnerable at present due to its expanding control by one major landholding and owner now owning most of the surrounding land and is driving its management as directed by one individual, which in our view is limiting and disturbing the existing local population and its views on the development, and therefore this external proposal is a welcome change in an otherwise limited-options area,” wrote Peter Bakker on behalf of the estate.

The spaceport is earmarked for the Moine Peninsula, south-east of Tongue.

The Protect the Moine campaign group has also objected.

But Melness Crofters Estate (MCE), which owns the earmarked site, and local community councils have backed the scheme.

“We wanted to ensure that the environment was protected and safety ensured,” wrote Dorothy Pritchard, chairwoman of MCE.

“There is a balance to be struck between environmental issues versus employment; MCE negotiated hard to ensure that our land is protected now and in the future.”

“We wanted to ensure that the environment was protected”