Highland haulage firm MacRithcie’s plans to move from Carsegate Industrial Estate to new HQ on the outskirts of Inverness near the A9 at Milton of Leys are given the green light by Highland Council
A family-owned Highland haulage firm’s bid to build a new base in Inverness has been given the green light by planners.
MacRitchie Highland Distribution lodged an application last year to build on a greenfield site just to the south-west of the A9’s Milton of Leys interchange.
The company intends to relocate from its current shared base in the Carsegate Industrial Estate, which it said was now too small as a result of expansion by the site’s other occupant - Wood’s Express Parcels.
The 30-year-old firm, which is one of Scotland’s leading independent providers of road haulage and distribution services, counts Lifescan Scotland Ltd among its major clients.
And in documents lodged alongside the plans last year, MacRitchie explained that the new Milton of Leys site would be ideal not just for connections to the A9, but also for access to Lifescan, which is based at Beechwood Business Park and is a world leader in blood glucose monitoring.
The document said: “The upper Milton of Leys site is ideally located to allow ease of connection to the A9 trunk road for journey's north and south.
“It also allows convenient access to Lifescan's location a couple of miles north and also located very close to the A9.”
The land earmarked for the new headquarters, which sits 155 metres south-east of 5 Balvonie Terrace, was previously zoned for mixed business/commercial and community uses.
But although this zoning was dropped when the newest version of the Inner Moray Firth Local Development Plan (IMFDLP) was adopted, council planners argued that an earlier planning permission in principle granting such use of the land meant that MacRitchie’s proposal could still be supported.
Approving the plans under delegated powers they said: “The site was zoned in the previous IMFLDP for development and planning permission in principle was granted under the allocation for up to 3,000sqm of business/commercial and community uses.”
They continued: “The adoption of IMFLDP2 brought the removal of this allocation. However, given the extant planning permission from May 2023, and the fact that this application, by the same applicant, is on part of the site that the PIP application earmarked for the business/industrial use, it is considered that the proposal can be supported.”
Two letters were received raising objections, which included the removal of the previous land allocation in the local development plan, the potential impact on local biodiversity, and the site’s lighting and HGV traffic in a residential area.
However, the council’s transport planning team did not object to the proposals. MacRitchie itself said it operates six articulated lorries, a 26-tonne lorry, an 18-tonne lorry and two vans, according to documents lodged with its application.
Three of those lorries leave Inverness each Monday morning to head for the Hull to Rotterdam Ferry, delivering Lifescan products to Belgium, before uplifting raw materials from France and returning to Inverness on a Friday night or Saturday morning.
The remaining lorries are mainly used for transporting the raw Lifescan product between Muir of Ord and the Beechwood production facility.
Meanwhile, the council planners also noted that the building’s design had been altered to reduce the size of the building’s office element, and also a “slight reduction” in the vehicle depot as well, which combined, cut its footprint from 1005sqm to 900sqm.
They added that, when it came to lighting, “the applicant is aware and conscious of excessive artificial lighting and keen to minimise light emission beyond the site boundary”.
They also said the the office side of the building would only usually operate during normal workday hours, while outwith that time frame the building use “will be limited and likely restricted to the ‘depot’ side of the building”.
They added that the depot’s high bay lighting would also be acceptable “given the location of the building and its relation to residential properties”.
Although the building has been given the go ahead, work does not look set to begin just yet, as a separate planning application is still being processed that would deal with the construction of the access road needed to enter the new HQ, and the wider zoned land beyond.
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