Report going to WDC meeting on 24.4.2024 recommending the Council supports the application by Flamingo Land to build a resort in Balloch. The meeting is open to the public in the old Burgh Hall at 16 Church Street, Dumbarton. Starts 4pm if you want to make your feelings clear to Labour-controlled West Dunbartonshire Council.
By Bill Heaney
Local people are planning to say No with a capital N – as if they haven’t done so a multitude of times already – to a plan by Flamingland to build a £40 million leisure playground, holiday resort and zoo at Balloch on Lomondside.
Their latest application for planning permission is due to come before West Dunbartonshire Council on April 24 in the council’s Burgh Hall headquarters at 16 Church Street, Dumbarton.
Protests to this plan are beginning to flood in again by way of social media posts, including one from Community Party councillor Jim Bollan, pictured right, in which he says in response to another objector, Andy Black, that this is the second application from Flamingoland and that it has been altered only slightly from the previous one that was withdrawn.
Mr Black says: “We’ve got to stop this,” and a fellow objector, Robert Layden, added: “Slid under the carpet. True democracy in action. Just who does this council serve?”
Public empowerment, which the council has been discussing stepping up, appears to be secreted away as far as the summit of Ben Lomond since the new application has been recommended for approval by the council’s director of planning, Pamela Clifford.
The new application, which is almost a photocopy of the previous one, states:
FLAMINGOLAND Item 07 – Erection and operation of a mixed-use tourism and leisure. It is recommended that the Council agrees Appendix 2 as this Council’s formal response to the above application.
Background
The Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park Authority received a planning application for the erection and operation of a mixed use tourism and leisure development at Land at Pier Road, Ben Lomond Way and Old Luss Road Known as West Riverside and Woodbank House (Lomond Banks)
Balloch in May 2022.
West Dunbartonshire Council have been consulted as a statutory consultee as neighbouring Planning Authority to the proposed development site. The vision is to create a £40million world–class accommodation led tourism destination that integrates itself with the current community of Balloch, bringing with it, much needed investment and job creation to the village.
Appendix 1 provides details of the application site, which is within Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park, in relation to the neighbouring West Dunbartonshire Planning Authority administrative boundary.
It states that Flamingo Land is a family owned Scottish Company who moved from Scotland to Yorkshire and was established in the 1970’s. It has grown to be one of the UK’s leading leisure resorts and zoo parks, attracting around 1.5 million visitors per year.
Lomond Banks is a major step away from Flamingo Land’s traditional portfolio of these parks, with plans to develop family accommodation, a craft brewery, leisure centre and swimming pool, restaurants, events area, pathways and landscaping but no theme park rides.
A previous application for tourism led recreational, residential, food and drink development on land at West Riverside and Woodbank House Balloch (pictured below) was withdrawn by the applicants. And so it continues ….
Top of page picture is of members of the Labour administration who will decide whether or not to give their approval for the Flamingoland project in Balloch.