Carbisdale plan deserves support
Sir – Nearly every time a development is proposed some people try to stop it.
The NT’s very detailed reports on the Carbisdale Hotel project show that this is maybe not the case here, but the result may be the same.
In the first report, Anne Henderson of Culrain says that the 40 or so people there do not want the hotel scheme stopped. What they are complaining about is that they were never consulted about the hotel taking over part of a woodland that the Culrain people looked after and improved.
The Forestry Commission or SYHA or developers were wrong in not consulting local people. Yet are the Culrain ones also wrong in making such a fuss that they may have caused the developers to drop the project?
Indeed your second report says that the developers’ agent wanted a quick Yes or No from Culrain but Culrain wants more discussion.
So the developers are now thinking about dropping the project and moving to somewhere else. If the project is dropped who are more to blame? The investors for using the Culrain complaint as an excuse, or the Culrain people for hanging on to their complaint too long instead of reaching an agreement?
It was good to read that Councillor Deirdre Mackay is saying that Highland Council is trying to get this project going. Highland and Islands MSP Jamie McGrigor also wants the project to go ahead.
The hotel project would create up to 90 jobs. It would bring to Sutherland a high quality part of international tourism. Is a row over 56 acres of woodland enough to stop this scheme from going through?
We hope that the council and others will persuade the developers that Sutherland is the place to be. We hope that the paper’s next report will be that the plan for Carbisdale Castle hotel is going ahead.
Andrew Marshall
31 Inchard Place
Kinlochbervie
