Gypsy site agreed for Crook of Devon - Perthshire

From the Perthshire Advertiser

Gypsy Travellers have been given the go-ahead to develop five pitches at Crook of Devon.

The site, located on a disused railway line and former council tip, is a strip of land alongside the B9097 on the east side of Crook Moss.

Traveller families have been living there for around 18 months, but there has been no drinking water supply or provision for waste drainage.

Forbes Marr, agent for the application before Perth and Kinross Council’s development management committee, said his clients were “desperate” to put in these services and some had actually moved away because of the unbearable conditions at Crook Moss.

In the run-up to the decision, deferred from August, 40 letters of objection had been received from local residents, citing ground contamination, flood risk, a full primary school and a lack of need in the area for this kind of development.

Delegations from Fossoway Community Council led by vice-chairman Alistair Lavery and Kinross-shire councillors, Willie Robertson and Michael Barnacle, were heard.

Cllr Barnacle said his constituents disputed the need for the development of the site. With 16 pitches already at Greenacres, he said Kinross-shire had made ample provision for Gypsy Travellers.

He acknowledged Cllr Joe Giacopazzi’s suggestion that travellers were increasingly being treated as “some kind of ‘super-applicant’ with priority above other groups”.

Cllr Willie Robertson pointed out that Kinross-shire provided 25% of Gypsy Traveller pitches on only 4% of the total land in Perth and Kinross.

Committee members agreed to pass the planning application, which was partly in retrospect, with a list of 17 conditions.

The travellers who own the site were given two months to develop access, landscaping, a private wastewater treatment facility, and bring mains electricity.

The condition detailing phosphorous mitigation for foul drainage, which must be installed at Hareslaw farm before the site was given its own system, was argued to have an unrealistic timescale by agent for the Gypsy Travellers, Forbes Marr.

Development quality manager Nick Brian said this condition, demanding engineering efforts to prevent harmful phosphates from waste entering the ground, was “the key condition”.

The time for the condition to be met was extended from two to three months, after Cllr John Kellas moved a motion to approve the pitch proposal with an extra month for the drainage condition to be carried out.

In the development management report put before councillors, the reasons for recommending permission for the five pitches at Crook Moss included the lack of objections about the proposed drainage arrangements from environmental consultees Sepa and SNH and the absence of specific policies in the existing development plan for Gypsy Traveller sites.