Leaderboard

Sorry, Charles. Can't help you out on any of this. Have you tried emailing the SLO?

Our final competitive game of 2023 is on Sunday when we host Ayr Utd in the Quarter Final of the Championship & League One Cup. I hope the women can finish with another win.

I know you are just trying to defend the club, and that's admiral to a point, but I'm afraid you are wrong/misinformed on much of what you have said on this thread. Read it back in full and you'll see that there's information and links on things like business and resident objections to the Battery Storage unit, as well as independent consultations that state the application doesn't meet the criteria and the club not taking advantage of pre application advice which would have highlighted issues and allowed them to consider them before proceeding. The concert company stuff is covered above. The CEO told us the green port was going to be huge for the club, but now the chairman is saying he can see no way it will benefit us at all. This is not a case of giving a pat on the back and saying they tried their best, everything above is riddled with evidence of mismanagement and incompetence.

I apologise, I had been informed that the Concert Co only had us involved at surface level.

So the tenant rebranded their entire business around the landlord? The Inverness Caley Thistle Concert Company Limited with a registered office at Caledonian Stadium and the listed director being the club chairman, Morrison, was mismanaged into liquidation by Gardiner and Morrison. Yet you seem cold on anyone putting their thinking caps on and questioning the same gents on their latest, non football related, bright idea.

These are valid questions that should be put to the board et al who are waxing lyrical about how important the project is for "net zero" and the future security of the club. Some meaningful and quantifiable substance behind their green and financial sound bites would be helpful.

I think the fact that the Committee did not decide to pass it with conditions attached indicates they were minded to refuse it. Planning decisions should ensure all planning regulations are complied with. It sets a dangerous precedent if projects which do not comply are accepted simply because the project is seen to be important for the local community. I would imagine the majority of the Councillors would, in principle, want to see this project succeed and therefore the deferment period would be used to explore how the current barriers to approval can be overcome. I suspect the biggest problem is that the site is on land designated as open space. Unless there is relevant precedent, one possible solution may be to re-designate the site and maybe a bit more of the old golf course site as well. This, presumably would require public consultation and could be a lengthy process, especially when the prospect of appeals are considered. Whatever the outcome, this whole episode represents another example of poor communication by the club. It is also another example of a potentially good idea not being actioned competently.

The recommendation to take pre application advice from the planners was not taken up by ILI/ICTFC. Naive, arrogant or both? Having watched the meeting, I'm not convinced the decision will end up going in favour of the club. When all is said and done, the application is to put an industrial operation on a protected open green site and all the noise mitigation and camouflage in the world isn't going to change that. A decision to allow it regardless isn't a precedent that council will want to set unless there's wider reaching benefit which can also be placed as a condition on future applications of a similar nature. A friendly councillor has managed to kick the can down the road by asking for the deferment, even if he also made it obvious that was primarily to buy time for ILI/ICTFC and not so much for the stated site visit.

Could anyone fill in exactly how this Battery Farm plan will operate? Who will manage and operate the facility on a day to day basis? Who will physically oversee construction? Who will ensure that there is a market? Where is the set-up capital coming from? In practical terms, what is the nature of the link between the football club and ILI? What’s in it for ILI? When would funds be expected to arrive with the club? What does the club have to do in order to qualify for revenue from this facility? What are the projected profits? What’s the level of risk? If there are losses, who is liable and what would the implications be for the football club? These are not hostile questions in any way. It’s just that, as a shareholder in ITandCFC, developments over the last week have led me to realise that I know very little about this project, which it’s hoped will revolutionise the football club’s finances.

The club has issued a statement on today’s planning deferral. Perhaps trying to build bridges after the recent lobbying: https://ictfc.com/club-statement-18/

Tell me you base your world view from information on the ICTFC Twitter feed without telling me you base your world view from information on the ICTFC Twitter feed 🙄

So long as they make a positive contribution and bring energy to the site it all good. Dont want things to go flat 😉

Should we 'charge' them... 🤐

So good we’ve got new members joining just for the batteries.

It's protected from development unless either: - it can be suitably demonstrated that the open space is not fit for purpose - substitute provision will be provided, or - development of the open space would significantly contribute to the spatial strategy for the area The applicant should have made the case that the development significantly contributes to the spatial strategy for the area by providing renewable energy infrastructure to support the creation of sustainable communities.

The key issue is the loss of designated open space and the implications that would have for other applications relating to housing that are coming forward for the old golf course. Even though planning applications should technically be considered on their own merits and therefore can't set a precedent, Council officers will still likely be thinking about how this will affect those other applications. Noise is pretty much a non-issue: these facilities are being consented all over the country with acoustic barriers and mitigation planting which lessens the amount of noise and any effect on properties. The distributor road being so close means that noise is already present in the area, and noise from the battery facility would blend into this to a large extent. It's pretty shoddy that ILI didn't submit a noise assessment up front with the planning application, and only did so after the Council's Environmental Health officer asked for one. Nonetheless, the mitigation features could easily be conditioned as part of an approval, as the chairman has said. The non-expert members of the planning committee are more likely than not to refuse the application for this reason, however. The other issues like biodiversity loss and drainage would be easy enough to overcome as well. It looks like ILI were caught on the hop by a change of planning policy relating to biodiversity in February, and then submitted a pretty poor quality report to deal with the issue (followed by the Council's ecologist being remarkably unhelpful, going by the correspondence on the website). Again though, if the council were being reasonable this issue could be overcome through agreements with officers. Transport is not an issue as these facilities generate little need for trips other than during construction - and the distributor road is a perfectly acceptable construction traffic route. Impacts on property value aren't a planning consideration. My suspicion is that Council officers are most concerned about the loss of open space and its implications for future development at the golf course, so they are trying to load up a refusal with as many reasons for refusal as possible to reduce the chances of an appeal to the Government succeeding. The real issue with the application that was submitted is a lack of a detailed planning policy assessment justifying the scheme, and that makes me wonder if ILI are treating this application as a low priority for whatever reason (probably as there's little profit in it for them). The club must have had positive pre-application discussions with the Council, otherwise I'm not sure where their confidence and subsequent surprise stems from. I reckon they'll actually have a pretty good chance of winning an appeal as the new National Planning Framework is very supportive of developments such as this, but that might take a year and will cost thousands if they want someone competent to handle the process.