By Chris Hardy

IS IT time to re-assess who can be considered essential workers in the rural economy?

A Laurencekirk architect representing the owners of the Sauchieburn Hotel, Luthermuir, who wish to build a home in the gardens of their hotel in the Mearns countryside, has said it is wrong that planning policy should dictate that his clients are non-essential workers.

“To assume the only essential workers in the rural economy are agricultural or forestry-based does not take account of the important role my clients play in the local workforce,” Alastair Murray told Kincardine and Mearns area committee when planning officials recommended refusal of the application.

“To continue to provide the service which their customers expect, it is necessary for a permanent staff presence to be on site and the only economic way this can be achieved is for our clients themselves to fulfil the role.

“To expect them to be available, on call, at all times necessitates that they live on site. To expect hoteliers to continue to occupy rooms within the hotel with little private facilities is to underestimate the required standards of modern licensees.

“Where once an hotelier may have been prepared to share kitchen facilities for private and business use, this is no longer acceptable.

“If the planning department is to encourage top quality catering facilities to conduct business in the area then they should recognise that modern and comfortable accommodation is a pre-requisite.

“Without this level of accommodation no quality licensee would be prepared to continue the business. Without this quality of business the local economy will be deficient.”

Mr Murray said it was his client’s intention to continue to improve the business. A swimming pool was part of the application and it would be available for use by the hotel residents and the rooms freed by their relocation into the new house would be upgraded to provide additional accommodation.

He said the hotel business was in the position of acting as host to many visitors to the area. It created the first impression that was often on what an area was judged. The planning department should encourage their efforts.

The planning department has said that a hotel, while potentially appropriate to the countryside, is not an essential function of it.

It believed the Sauchieburn enterprise could operate efficiently without a house, and indeed already did, with the owners living within the hotel itself.

Suitable alternative accommodation could easily be obtained at nearby Luthermuir, approximately three quarters of a mile away.

The fundamental issue was that the proposed development outwith a settlement or cohesive group of housing, was not a long-term sustainable land use and no justification had been provided to support the case that the proposed house was essential to efficiently operate the hotel business.

Councillors deferred consideration of the application to give time for further dialogue between the applicant and the planning department, which suggested that there were buildings within the curtilage of the hotel grounds that may be capable of development.