Meeting of the Parliament 11 June 2025
I will try again. Grand.
I thank Jackie Baillie for giving us the opportunity to have this debate and for forcing the move to recall this afternoon.
For a decade, now, many of us have been involved in the campaign to save Loch Lomond from Flamingo Land, and we had won at every step of the way until three weeks ago, when the reporter made the recommendation that the application should go ahead. At that point, we were told that it was over. I thank everyone who has proved the doubters wrong and who has spent the past three weeks campaigning relentlessly to put pressure on the Government and to force the recall decision. It was a community campaign, but it went national.
For the 2019 Flamingo Land application, we lodged 60,000 objections. For the 2024 application, we lodged 155,000 objections. In the past three weeks alone, more than 51,000 people have emailed the planning minister, demanding that he recall the application. That demonstrates the strength of feeling not just in the local community, but across Scotland. We have all fought so hard for that because we know how special Loch Lomond is. It is world famous for a reason, and Balloch is the gateway to the loch, so I am genuinely glad that ministers have listened.
There are two reasons why the application should have been recalled and why it is right that ministers have made that decision: it is a significant application in a national park, and it would set a precedent for the whole planning system in the interpretation of NPF4. It is significant precisely because Balloch is the gateway to our national park, and it is not just a local issue—it is a major development, and it was unanimously rejected by the national park’s board. It is unquestionably in the public interest that ministers make the final decision.
However, it also points to a wider issue. Any appeal on a major development within our national parks should go straight to ministers—it should not go through a reporter. Any major development in an area of Scotland that we, as the Parliament, have designated as being of national significance should ultimately be decided on by ministers.