Site visit planned this month to building at centre of planning dispute
A SITE visit by a government official to the former Lerwick school building at the centre of a planning appeal will take place later this month.
Once the site visit to the science block at the old Anderson High School has been completed, a decision on New Life Shetland’s plans to use the building as a place of worship will follow in due course.
Meanwhile Shetland Islands Council (SIC) said it is of the view that no new planning‐related issues material to the consideration of the case have been raised in recent representations from the public.
Whilst New Life has the approval for an asset transfer of the building, councillors expressed concern about the level of detail around traffic management and parking and turned down a change of use planning application last year against the recommendation of officers.
There was also concern about the prospect of construction traffic moving around the wider ex-school site during its redevelopment whilst the church building is in operation.
Church planning application hits roadblock over traffic and parking concern
The planning refusal was appealed and taken to the Scottish Government.
The government has now confirmed a site visit to the area will take place later in April.
The council has also briefly responded to some recent representation from the public.
This included concern over the community asset transfer process, and a suggestion the science block would be better off demolished like many other buildings on the site.
But the council said it is of the opinion that these matters are not relevant to the appeal case.
The SIC noted that representations also raise concerns in relation to parking provision.
Meanwhile New Life Shetland said formal representation from Peter Hamilton and Kerrie Meyer – who have campaigned against the plans on equality grounds – “does not raise any planning issues to which we wish to respond”.
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Unlike other representation, their comments were not published online.
The Scottish Government’s planning appeals division said to Hamilton and Meyer: “Because of the nature of your comments we err on the side of caution in terms of what we publish and on this occasion have decided not to publish your comments”.
However, parties involved in the case will see a full unredacted version of their comments.
Meanwhile there is no firm update as to when the demolition of most of the buildings on the former Anderson High School site will begin.
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