Second bid is being opposed by conservation group

Scotland’s largest conservation charity will oppose a new attempt to develop a holiday complex at one of the country’s most historical sites.

The National Trust for Scotland opposed the original planning application for the site at Faebuie, Culloden Moor in May 2018 with the application subsequently turned down by the Highland Council.

The trust owns a key part of the Culloden Battlefield but not the land on which the stables are built.

Nevertheless, the charity has raised its voice in the past against developments which threated the integrity of the wider historic battlefield, which ranged over a large area on April 16, 1746, and its setting.

The wider historic battlefield has had conservation area status applied to it by Highland Council. This was a protective measure put in place after the Scottish Reporter overturned a decision by the council to refuse planning permission for a luxury housing development at nearby Viewhill Farm.

This re-submitted proposal is once again based on the conversion of the Treetop equestrian centre to enable construction of holiday, leisure and hospitality facilities.

Clea Warner, the National Trust for Scotland’s general manager for the Highlands and Islands said: “I can see nothing especially ‘new’ about this new submission.

“The previous application was turned down by Highland Council because it wasn't sufficiently sensitive to the surrounding woodland, and undermined the conservation area. While the 2020 application appears to suggest additional landscaping, quite frankly I can’t otherwise see much difference from the preceding 2018 submission.”

The battlefield is sacred to many people as the place where in 1746 the Jacobite rising led by Prince Charles Edward Stuart was crushed by government troops in the last pitched battle fought on British soil.