Place Planning and Investment Model

NICE Directors’ recently reinforced their commitment to supporting two new initiatives launched by Scottish Government – ‘Place Principle’ and the Capital investment for regeneration. Check the links for full details. NICE has written via email to elected representatives urging participation in these initiatives and offering full support for the benefit of Nairn and Nairnshire.

Regeneration email
Following our NICE Director’s meeting last night, we welcome the opportunity to work with Highland Council on the regeneration of Nairn’s Town Centre. We all agree that this a great opportunity to regenerate the town centre and bring back into use many of the buildings that are empty and/or need a new use.

We would like to look at the best use of town centre buildings undertaken by the BID (Bob Ferenth and Sheena Baker) and the HC. This would mean identifying all the properties and deciding what is best use for them. It would also identify which buildings we cannot see a realistic use for and agreeing a replacement plan for the building or vacant site including structural/feasibility studies where needed.

Government policy is to revitalise centres and make them vibrant and successful. They must also be green and sustainable and have a lot more people living and working in them.

We welcome this policy and know that, working together, we can produce the town centre we all want to see and help meet the housing need that has been identified for Nairn.

Happy to discuss further and help in any way we can. We think the town centre regeneration initiatives will be the best use of the Place  Based Investment Funds. Do you agree?

Place Planning Model:

At last night’s NICE Director’s meeting we discussed the benefit to Nairn and Nairnshire of using the new Place Planning model to deliver a Nairn and a Nairnshire Local Place Plan. We agreed that this would give the strategic framework necessary before prioritising the various projects and above all making sure they are delivered.

NICE will play its part as a community – controlled body for Nairn, as defined by the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015, working with the Community Councils.

We think the starting point would be to agree the statutory DATA sets with Highland Council for population and housing needs assessment. This would mean building on the work we are doing with Scott Dalgarno. Douglas Chisholm and Mike Atkinson – underway before Covid interrupted – how best can we do this together?

The Scottish Government is very supportive of this model, and we have had a lot of preliminary discussions with them and HC about this. We look forward to delivering this Local Place Plan and think it is win, win for Nairnshire if we all work together to agree and deliver it

Happy to discuss further and make sure we all benefit from this exciting future for Nairnshire

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