YOUR VIEWS: Answers to youth migration and What do SSEN have to hide?

Answers to youth migration

The northern Highlands is at “the edge” of being destroyed by strangers and “international” giants who wish to claim this land for its emptiness, space, wind power and little resistance.

This pressure is once again being placed on the last surviving natural dune heathland, the 'Coul Links', a protected world-known Ramsar, SSSI and SPA site.

The public hearing for the proposed golf course (live broadcasted) is just another cat and mouse game.

A disguised economic opportunity where the only drive is money. The extended garden being the hyperreality of the billionaire man.

We can do something ourselves to reduce the “youth migration”. Put affordable housing on the agenda with the highest priority. The Scottish Government holds commitments to do so in the National Planning Framework 4'.

Evidence shows that 46 per cent (HIE 2020 report) of young people wish to stay where they have grown up. So, time to change the tide and push harder for community ownership, less empty holiday houses through introduction of land tax, and allowances for young people.

Future potential is in community focus, with our young people being the main drive in enhancing our natural and historic assets and becoming their own entrepreneurs. Rising community hubs can offer training and enrolment into qualifications and be motivated by their local identity and environment.

Examples of projects are the successful Wick community-owned campsite and the funded Rosal Clearance village community ownership project, both with new job roles.

The council has agreed to a few new job positions to oversee the swamp of applications in renewable energy (September 2024).

But where are the new ecology positions to oversee all natural and scenic SSSI sites that are under high pressure of being ruined?

The social workforce is crying out for staff in the northern Highlands.

Opportunities are there. Our young ones can go off and return home to own it.

Anyone who is interested in further reading, references, links to community projects, or to connect please email lacaja@hotmail.co.uk

Larisa Jansen

Evanton

What do they have to hide?

A couple of days ago the application from SSEN for the Banniskirk substation was published on the Highland Council planning website under the planning number 24/04898/FUL. So far, the application has not been published in a newspaper. However, SSEN only plans to publish in newspapers down south: the Inverness Courier, the P&J and the Edinburgh Gazette. The only hard copies displayed can be found in Bonar Bridge and in Inverness. Nothing in local papers and no hard copies in Caithness.

Why this secrecy you might ask. What has SSEN to hide?

One thing they try to hide is the size of this development. Banniskirk substation will be located between Spittal and Halkirk on the far side of the A9. The area of the site is larger than Halkirk and the fenced in area which excludes roads and bunding and detention ponds and overhead line towers will be almost half of the size of Halkirk.

Another thing they try to hide is that this substation will not be the end of development for the area. This substation is the endpoint for the massive 400kV overhead line in planning with towers of up to 70m, more than twice the height of existing towers and for a subsea link to the south planned from Sinclair Bay. Neither for the overhead line nor for the subsea link have planning applications been submitted yet.

In addition to SSEN’s additional infrastructure, the area will also see additional substations and incoming power lines from individual developers who wish to connect to the Banniskirk substation. So far, we know of West of Orkney and Ayre wind farms. Their substations are not the same size as Banniskirk but close to it. And there will be more.

For residents of the wider area this means massive construction upheaval for decades. It means an unprecedented degree of industrialisation in the heart of Caithness. It means cumulative impacts that have not been addressed properly because of the salami slicing of applications and because no assessment is made that includes all different types of developments in the area.

You might think we need this development because wind farms up here are constantly constrained off and we as the consumer have to pay for it. However, our existing overhead line is not used to capacity and could easily export what we produce. The problem is that there is no one down south who wants to or can take our electricity.

Kathrin Haltiner

Westerdale

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