By now I think we all know that Chap Homes would like to build a 1,000 to 2, 000 home 'eco-village' on the site of the existing Park quarry, something they no doubt see as preferable to reinstating the land. It is clearly a serious objective, and one supported by a not insignificant PR campaign.

The purpose of the 'website' article is to persuade us that we have been consulted and to inform us that the result of that consultation is that we do want the eco-village. To convince us this message is real, very large numbers are mentioned. Apparently the website has had 140,000 hits. I think most of us realise that this means absolutely nothing as most of those hits probably arise from 'random surfing'.

What is important, is that just 100 stopped at the site to complete the survey, 49 of whom stated they would 'definitely' like to live in Park village (presumably as depicted on the Chap website). So, we have 49 people who would definitely like to live in such a village. However, unlike the Aberdeen Shire and City Structure Plan, the Main Issues Report and the Local Development Planning consultation which is part of our democratic process, the Chap survey results don't seem to be publically available. For example, we don't know where these 49 people come from and we don't know how many of them filled in the survey more than once. What we do know is that not many of them seemed to be at the public meetings where, I for one, sensed almost no support at all for the eco-village. In fact, the sense I get from the Crathes, Drumoak and Durris area is that people broadly support the Structure Plan which very much indicates against developments of this size out with the so called 'Strategic Development Areas' which, mainly for reasons of lack of infrastructure, do not include Deeside.

To me, and many of us involved with Structure plan consultation, that would appear to be 'game over' for the idea of an eco-village at Park. Wouldn't it?

Yours etc
David Morrish
Crathes