THE SCOTTISH Government's economic development agency is coming under increasing pressure to divorce itself from a Flamingo Land project as part of a Save Loch Lomond campaign.
Some 13,000 have signed a petition calling for Scottish Enterprise to end its links with the company that planned a £30m Flamingo Land holiday resort on the shores of Balloch.
It calls for the the exclusivity agreement held by Flamingo Land over land at Loch Lomond to be ended.
Scottish Green MSP Ross Greer has presented a petition to the Scottish Government, calling on the publicly funded body to take action over the agreement the firm still holds despite their ‘resort’ plans having been rejected over a year ago.
This agreement means that only Flamingo Land can buy the land.
Yorkshire-based Flamingo Land Ltd formally withdrew its planning application after officials for the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park Authority recommended its board reject the bid last year.
More than 55,000 objections were lodged against the Lomond Banks development.
But the team behind the project has not ruled out submitting a fresh application at a later date.
READ MORE: Flamingo Land pulls out of £30m Loch Lomond development
Flamingo Land Ltd and Scottish Enterprise confirmed that they had informed the National Park Authority they collectively wished to withdraw the live planning application.
Scottish Enterprise had previously confirmed that they had been in talks with Flamingo Land over the sale of the 44 acres of land needed for the project.
In a letter to Government ministers, Mr Greer, the West of Scotland MSP described the situation as "a long-running saga which has exhausted the community and needs to end".
The exclusivity agreement had previously been extended by two years and is due to expire this month. It is expected that a further extension would be negotiated if Flamingo Land wished to lodge a new application.
Mr Greer has now written to Fiona Hyslop, the Scottish Government's Economy Secretary, urging her to ensure the agreement with Flamingo Land is not renewed.
Ross Greer who had described the proposed development as the "most unpopular planning application in Scottish history" said: “It’s over a year since the community first defeated Flamingo Land’s destructive and unwelcome plans and we still don’t know whether a line can finally be drawn under this or if it will start all over again with a fresh application. This long-running saga has exhausted the community and it needs to end. Flamingo Land lost, they are not welcome and they need to move on.
“Whether or not that happens is ultimately in the hands of the Scottish Government and their economic agency. They can either extend the agreement, again, which would likely mean years of Flamingo Land fighting for an inappropriate, damaging and unwanted development and the community being forced to once again fight back, or they can cancel the exclusivity agreement and support local residents to decide what an appropriate future for the site would be."
The large chunk of Loch Lomond was originally handed over for the project by Scottish Enterprise "for the sake of a high-end tourist resort".
The project co-ordinators were given "preferred developer" status fter a national marketing campaign for the site by Scottish Enterprise. That gave exclusivity over the area to undertake site investigations such as geotechnical, ecology, flood risk, utilities and access studies.
A Scottish Enterprise spokesman said: “As the petition recognises, we are currently bound by the legal terms of an exclusivity agreement.
“However, we continue to consider the interests of the local community as we work to help the economy recover from the impact of the Covid pandemic.”
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