Plans have been approved for new cooking and toilet facilities at a wigwam campsite in the Cairngorms following a site visit.
Speyside Trust, the charity which runs Badaguish Outdoor Centre, will also seek to build a car park on land to the north east of the centre for visitors at the campsite.
Eleanor Mackintosh, the CNPA Planning Committee Convener said: “As a planning authority we strive to see good applications coming before us leading to high quality projects on the ground that benefit residents and visitors while ensuring we are looking after the Park’s special qualities.”
Trust director Andrew MacKenzie said he was “absolutely delighted” with the decision, adding: “The new facilities are more about improving quality at the site. It’s been a staged development and the ideas of phasing is that we learn as we go. The original application was for 35 wigwams and we have 22 at the moment. We are just trying to complete the development”.
But there have been opponents to the latest developments who last month took issue with the planning committee over a recommendation to approve the plans, resulting in a site visit on Friday.
Local environmental groups have been especially vocal.
In 2012, planning permission for 35 wigwams at Badaguish was granted with conditions, but in August 2014 unauthorised works were found to have taken place with the breach of 11 conditions.
The CNPA later served an enforcement notice on the Trust.
Following yesterday’s decision, a spokesman for the Badenoch and Strathspey Conservation Group said it was “disappointed” that the CNPA had allowed the “highly inappropriate development” of a car park and portable toilets in the Caledonian forest of Glenmore.
He added: “The CNPA has put building an unnecessary car park ahead of repairing a natural forest in complete contravention of the National Park Authority’s own declared transport strategy for Glenmore.”
