Abbeylands Residents

If you’ve ever visited Dunbar in the summer, you’ll know it is the resident gull population that is in control. Local Dunbar residents share their tight living spaces with a small but significant colony of nesting gulls, which in some previous years have bred rather too successfully.

Gulls are a nuisance, not so much because they call incessantly during the breeding season, but because they foul persistently. Gulls are smart too and have learnt how to persuade teenagers to part with the food, congregating at school times at the local Grammer school, on the High Street in the evenings, when fish and chips are shared. They will also tear open a bin liner and spread its contents liberally, enter shops and homes and increase your window washing bill from £0 to £100s.
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I welcome that the council is consulting on these proposals.

I have made comprehensive comments on the specific consultation questions and expressed a range of concerns about the proposals – sketchy though they are – first outlined in the Cabinet paper dated 29 March 2011. I have annotated a dynamic map with additional commentary and thoughts here:

http://abbeylandsresidents.org.uk/wiki-map-dunbar-traffic-regulation-order/

In my view the TRO measures should contribute to 3 things:

a)   High Street regeneration,

b)   a modal shift to active or public transport, and last but not least

c)    pedestrian and cycle safety.

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Graeme Armet recently obtained planning permission to modify the Abbey Church Dunbar and convert it into a 5 bed-roomed home late in 2012, but it was a painful and tortuous process.  Yet receiving the planning permission turned out to be a pyrrhic victory as there was another more substantial hurdle to surmount, the refusal of Listed Building consent.  Armett duly submitted an appeal to Scottish Ministers in January 2013.

The decision making process for planning appeals is quite mechanical and seems to leave rather more room for subjective judgement than at first meets the eye. I leave it to others to judge whether the appointed reporter was being selective or entirely impartial in the arguments martialled in dismissing the appeal. Dan Jackman the appointed reporter refused the appeal on the 5^th April 2013.

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