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MSPs discuss Trump golf proposals |
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Wednesday, 05 December 2007 |
The controversial decision by Aberdeenshire Council to reject Donald Trump’s £1 billion golf resort plans was discussed by MSPs today in the Parliament’s Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee.
Following a vote by the local council’s Infrastructure Services
Committee last week, decided on the casting vote of committee convener
Martin Ford, the application which included two championship golf
course, a five-star hotel and a housing development was rejected.
Aberdeenshire Council has since announced there will be a public
meeting of the full council next Wednesday on the application.
After a strong and widespread reaction to the unpopular decision
amongst the public, leading business figures, MSPs and Aberdeen City
Council the Scottish Government has intervened in the debacle. In a
rare move the Government announced last night that as Trump’s proposals
raised issues of national importance, it was calling in the application
for the Menie Estate in Aberdeenshire.
Discussion of the application issue was a late addition to the
Committee’s agenda and focused on the decision’s impact on golf tourism
in Scotland. There was unanimity amongst Members that it was crucial
that Aberdeenshire Council’s decision be reversed and that the
Government’s intervention was extremely welcome and an early outcome
hoped for.
David Whitton MSP said: "This is a huge development that would have a
massive impact for all of Scotland, not just the North East... Scotland
is known the world over for golf and if we are turning down major golf
initiatives then frankly there’s no hope for us."
Aberdeen North MSP Brian Adam who has been vocal on this issue endorsed
the Government's move to call in the application and expressed his
concern over the implications of losing the development. He said: "I'm
very concerned that if this development doesn't go ahead, it's going to
deliver an international message that Scotland is not the kind of place
to come and invest in."
Committee members were also keen that lessons be learned from this
series of events and incorporated in the Committee’s current Inquiry
into Tourism. In light of Trump’s decision not to appeal plus the
recent revelation that Trump's lawyers are considering transferring the
development to Northern Ireland, Aberdeen Central MSP Lewis Macdonald
pointed out the lessons to be learned in terms of the mobility of
capital in the 21st century.
Macdonald also raised the issue of inadequacies in Aberdeenshire
Council’s procedures, as a local area committee had backed the proposal
before it went to a sub-committee which rejected it. Describing this as
a "flaw" in the council’s decision making process he said, "The council
discovered it did not have the power as a council, as an authority, to
actually review a decision taken by one of its sub-committees."
The Committee agreed to write to the Government on the issue to put these points forward.
No one has commented on this article.
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