Flamingo Land ‘desperate’ to accuse 90,000 objectors of being ‘robots’ says Ross Greer MSP

WEDNESDAY, 19th June 2pm. Let’s show flaminGOland representatives & LLTNP we mean NO.

Bring your banners whistles and most of all your friends. WEDNESDAY, 19th June 2pm

By Bill Heaney

Scottish Greens MSP Ross Greer has hit back at false claims by controversial mega-resort developer Flamingo Land that tens of thousands of objections to their plans should be discounted.

Flamingo Land spin doctor Fiona Robertson, of consultancy firm Streets UK, recently claimed to West Dunbartonshire Council that the online portal set up by Scottish Greens to make it easier for people to lodge an objection is “An online petition that can neither prove who has signed it nor where they live” and that they “are not registered objections to this planning application…”

Both of these claims are false. In fact, the Scottish Greens’ portal sends a separate and unique objection to the national park for every individual objector. As with objections sent to the National Park directly, each response submitted via the portal requires a name and postcode.

When the portal was first launched against Flamingo Land’s previous application back in 2019, the National Park reported to their Board on the number of objections received, including those through the Scottish Greens Portal.

This time round, the National Park have regularly written to local Scottish Green MSP Ross Greer, pictured right, to acknowledge the number of representations received.

The most recent acknowledgement, on 29^th April, confirmed the receipt of 83,024 emails. Thousands of additional objections have been lodged since.

And now, the Scottish Greens can reveal an analysis of objectors’ postcodes shows that over 52,000 are from the central belt (G, EH, PA, ML and FK postcodes), and nearly 3000 are from the G82 and G83 postcodes.

Over three-quarters of the objections are from Scotland, most of the remainder are from England, while a handful of others have given addresses around Europe, North America and Australia. A number of objectors from further afield have included details of connections to, or simply a deep love for, the Loch Lomond area.

The statutory deadline for objections to the plans passed last month, but Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park have confirmed that “the consultation period will remain open, and public comments can continue to be submitted after this date until a short time before the Planning Officer’s Report to the Planning Committee is published.”

Balloch’s Scottish Green MSP Ross Greer said: ““This is increasingly desperate stuff from Flamingo Land. The suggestion that over 90,000 people who have taken time to object are imaginary or a team of robots, or somebody sitting in a basement inventing fake personas is verging on paranoia.

“It’s also frankly offensive to objectors, especially local residents who have fought these destructive plans for almost a decade.

“Flamingo Land’s spin doctors will do anything to distract from the fact that they’ve come up with the most unpopular planning application in Scottish history. They trotted out this silly claim back in 2019 and it was roundly dismissed, so it very much looks like they’re scraping the barrel by trying it again this time around.

“It should be no surprise that so many people would object to this massive leisure development in an iconic location, bringing over a hundred lodges, two hotels, a water park, a monorail, one car every 14 seconds at peak times and much more.

“People from across the country are uniting to protect our National Park and to support the local community in Balloch.

“The number of objections is growing towards six figures and it’s still worth lodging your own objection if you’ve not done so yet. Just go to greens.scot/flamingoland.”

ordon Gibb of Flamingo Land said he would not proceed further if their plans were not welcome.

“He said this in a Scotsman article 2016 (link below). We said NO … locals said NO , Scotland said NO… why won’t Mr Gibb stay true to his words? (Because he wants prime real estate on a world famous Loch for a song). He is not a man of his word and I don’t trust him, do you?”