Everyone loves a resort, right? Well, according to ongoing drama in Loch Lomond, apparently not.
Here’s the TL;DR of the hottest gossip in the UK resort community: Flamingo Land, a resort and theme park in Yorkshire, wants to expand. Its owners decided to take their business ventures north, where competition is limited and there’s a lot of empty space. They set their sights on the bottom of Loch Lomond for a new ‘mega resort’, which you can read more about here.
But locals weren’t happy. A whopping 98,000 people signed a petition in opposition to the development, which ground the entire process to a halt.
And that’s where we are now. Although Flamingo Land believes moving into the locale would boost its economy by up to £3 million and create hundreds of jobs, its would-be neighbours are just not having it.
The Scottish Greens have led the ‘save Loch Lomond’ campaign, which is spearheaded by the belief that this is ‘the most unpopular planning application in Scottish history’.
Ross Greer, an MSP for the Greens, explained that ‘the community have fought against these proposals for almost a decade now, defeating the first application and collecting a record number of objections to this latest version.’
A decision will be made on September 16 at a public forum in Balloch, the town nearest to the potential resort. A spokesperson for the Loch Lomond and the Trossach National Park Authority said that a ‘decision has not yet been made’.
The spokesperson further said: ‘With high levels of public interest, we felt it would be useful to set out as early as possible the process for taking a decision. Officers now have all the information required to assess the application, and that assessment will continue between now and September.’
We’ll have to wait until September to find out what becomes of this whole sorry affair. If permission is given you can be certain that Flamingo Land will have thousands of angry Scots to deal with, and that isn’t a fate we’d wish on anyone.
A thrill-seeker’s guide to the UK
Flamingo Land isn’t the only place you can get your adrenaline rush. We’ve got an essential guide to the nine best theme parks in the UK, as well as a rundown of the country’s best outdoor activities for adrenaline junkies. We’ve also ranked our favourite haunted places in Britain, if you prefer to get your kicks from the supernatural.
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