Highlands and Islands Greens
Greens Call for Entire Planning Committee to Resign
— 7 February 2010
Highlands and Islands Greens have called upon Councillor Michael Foxley, Leader of The Highland Council, to dismiss the entire membership of the Council’s Planning, Environment and Development Committee following its consistent failure to implement its own planning guidance encouraging the provision of low energy measures in new homes throughout the Highlands. Greens point out that these measures could have significantly reduced households’ energy costs, boosted local businesses, and helped to tackle climate change. All this is set out in Highland Council’s own “Designing for Sustainability” guidance, published in 2006, which the Council has failed to enact.
The Council's own figures illustrate the enormous scale of the missed opportunity. On average, since 2003, 1,200 new private houses have been built each year in the Highlands. In 2007 alone some 1,800 houses were completed. Furthermore, the Council’s Highland Housing Assessment states that the Council expects some 1,100 new households to be built each year up to 2021. Thousands of Highlands residents have therefore missed out on the kind of low-cost, low-carbon housing Greens wish to see.
For example, encouraging developers to include the provision for water-heating solar panels on new residential properties in their planning applications could have resulted in:
- An estimated 50% saving on household annual water heating bills;
- A huge stimulus for domestic renewable energy businesses across the Highlands, and significant local employment opportunities; and
- Significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions from new properties.
Donnie Macleod, the Greens’ prospective Parliamentary candidate for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, said: “We need to see proper commitment from our local Councillors to sustainable housing, and we need to see them honouring their own policies. We do not believe the current Planning Committee have the will or the intention to do the right thing, and it’s time now for the entire Planning Committee to resign or to be sacked.
“The Council has demonstrated a total lack of political will on greening new homes built in the Highlands through the Planning Committee’s failure to implement their own sustainable design guidance. Thousands of homeowners are paying the price for the corners they have cut, and we have lost patience with them. We cannot afford yet another year of failure, yet another year of substandard homes being nodded through, and yet another year where local businesses miss out on substantial economic opportunities.”
Highlands and Islands Green Party’s task is to communicate, and help achieve, our vision of a green, sustainable society and the benefits such a society has to offer.
In these pages you can find out how Greens in the Highlands and Islands, are going about that task, together with links to the wider Green Party community.
Use the navigation links for:
- more articles and press releases;
- contact details;
- information about the Scottish Green Party, and Green Parties around the World.
Recent Articles:
Cracking Result for Eigg
— 13 January 2010
The Green Party in the Highlands and Islands has congratulated the islanders of Eigg for their success in the Big Green Challenge.
The islanders shared in the million-pound first prize in the competition run by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts.
Party spokesperson Eleanor Scott, who took part in last year’s Big Green Footsteps event, said: “The islanders of Eigg have shown what a small community can do to reduce its carbon footprint while maintaining an excellent quality of life.
“The energy supply on Eigg today is now much greener, but also much more resilient as it comes from various sources, while the community’s move to have better insulation and more locally produced food is a winner in both environmental and quality of life terms.
“Nobody on Eigg takes their energy supply for granted — the community there knows more about electricity use and generation than any other in Scotland.
“Eigg has a lot to teach us all”
“Go For It!” Greens Urge KBR
— 18 December 2009
Highland Greens today expressed dismay that Nigg owners KBR have delayed until May a decision on the manufacturing of offshore wind turbines at the former fabrication yard.
Party spokesperson Eleanor Scott said: “I really don't know what KBR are waiting for. They describe the plans for offshore wind turbines as “high risk”, but this is mature technology with a growing market — there simply is no alternative to renewable energy for the future.
“KBR should stop dithering and just go for it — the proposals would be good for the planet and good for Easter Ross.”
Greening Inverness: Highland Greens’ Proposals for a Sustainable City
— 24 November 2009
As part of its response to The Highland Council’s recent ‘Main Issues’ Highland–wide development plans consultation, Highlands and Islands Greens have called for a range of measures to ‘green’ Inverness, in particular the redevelopment of the centre to create one central transport hub, and for the maintenance of East Inverness as ‘green belt’.
“Our aim is to make public transport in and out of Inverness a far more attractive proposition,” said Donnie Macleod, the Greens’ Westminster election candidate for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey.
Highland Greens Challenge The Highland Council’s Fundamental Case for
Developing the A96 Corridor Between Inverness and Nairn
— 17 November 2009
In their response to The Highland Council’s recent ‘Main Issues’ Highland–wide development plans consultation, Highlands and Islands Greens have challenged the basis of the Council’s case for developing the A96 corridor between Inverness and Nairn, as proposed in the consultation document.
“While we welcome some of the proposals contained in the report, we fundamentally object to the principle of an A96 corridor. We are also wholly opposed to the proposed entirely new and huge developments of East Inverness and Tornagrain within the corridor” said Donnie Macleod, the Greens’ Westminster election candidate for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey.
