Flamingo Land decision lays bare the Scottish Administration's contempt for local democracy

Published in The Edinburgh Evening News, May 25th, 2025.

The following is a guest post from David Younger on the decision by the Scottish Administration (it’s NOT a government) to allow the Loch Lomond Flamingo Land theme park to go ahead, ignoring overwhelming opposition from the Scottish public, the National Parks Board, the Woodland Trust, the National Trust for Scotland, Ramblers Scotland, the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA), the transport authorities and the local council.

Scotland is one of the least democratic nations in Europe. The Scottish People are supposedly sovereign but are never given an opportunity to exercise their sovereignty. Rather, it is repeatedly violated by their elected representatives in Holyrood and Westminster who are servile to special interests rather than to the wishes of the Scottish People.

This deplorable situation can’t continue, but we’ll have to change it ourselves. Here’s what you can do now:

1) Write to Planning minister Ivan McKee (Ivan.McKee.msp@parliament.scot) to register your disgust with the Scottish Administration’s blatant contempt for local democracy.
2) Sign PE2135 to implement the ICCPR into Scots law, and write to your MSP demanding they support it.
3) Register at Scotland Decides, an independent online voting platform that accords with national and international standards.

As an architect of some forty five years’ experience, a great deal of which involved working with planning authorities in England, I do not understand the planning system in Scotland.

Among the many expert bodies which rejected the Flamingo Land application last year, perhaps the most relevant is the National Parks Board. Their remit is to protect the land under their authority and their unanimous rejection of Flamingo Land’s plans should have brought this sorry business to an end.

But nooooo.

Flamingo Land lodged an appeal at the end of last year and this is where it all gets weird. Rather than the appeal being heard in a public inquiry with all information being shared and evaluated as we would find in the English system, we have a government “reporter”. This strange person [the Director & Chief Reporter is a man called Lindsey Nicoll] makes decisions with little or no reference to preceding events and without any respect for local democracy. Public opinion doesn’t matter. Furthermore, this reporter seems to sometimes be part of the Scottish Administration and sometimes not.

This from the Daily Record:

A Scottish Government [Administration] spokesperson said: “An independent reporter has issued a decision intimating that he is minded to grant planning permission in principle for the proposal subject to 49 planning conditions subject to a legal agreement being reached between the national park authority and developer to secure the employment and environment issues that are set out in the Lomond Promise”.

So the reporter is ‘independent’. But, hold on, he’s making a decision on behalf of the Scottish Administration. If he’s independent, does this mean the Scottish Administration has given up administering? And where do the views of the Parks authority, SEPA, the transport authorities, the local council and the general public – currently 178,000 of them – come in to the assessment? As for the 49 planning conditions subject to a legal agreement being reached, Flamingo Land has been vague.

This from Parkwatch:

The application is for Planning Permission in Principle (PPiP) and Flamingo Land has used this to avoid providing information that shows whether or not they will be able to meet the Scottish Government’s [Administration’s] new policy requirements. Many of the responses contain the words “Whilst the proposal is not at the detailed design stage” – i.e Flamingo Land either don’t yet know or are unwilling to provide the answer – and are then followed by vague commitment to meet policy requirements. This is not good enough.

This isn’t the first time that something like this has happened. Remember Trump’s golf course? Or the nine fish farm refusals which were overturned? Just a couple of incidents where local democracy was ditched in favour of powerful interests.

While it could be argued that the events surrounding Flamingo Land reek of corruption, what is much more important is that we have a system which itself is corrupt. That is, it removes all controls inhibiting corruption and allows decisions to be made outwith public or even parliamentary scrutiny. It’s an open door for unscrupulous gold-diggers.

Green MSP Ross Greer is urging us to write to the Planning Minister, Ivan McKee, demanding that the Scottish government calls in Flamingo Land’s application, presumably subject to a full inquiry. It’s the minimum we should expect in a functioning democracy.

But this doesn’t address the matter of local democracy and the right of self-determination which has been hung out to dry by the process. Nor does it prevent something like Flamingo Land happening again.

So, Ross, I have a suggestion for you. In 2020 the Scottish government passed the Referendums (Scotland) Act. This allows for a vote to take place in the matter of any controversial content. The Act is intended to be applied to any act that the Scottish Administration itself passes but, given that this is now Administration business, I believe that the Act applies. Voting can be restricted to the postal codes most affected, although publicity suggests that a national vote would work just as well. We could wait until the 49 conditions have been dealt with and issue the full details before the vote is held.

If the Administration declines the opportunity to actually consult the People, Scotland Decides can do it for them. Seriously. We have the facilities for verifiable online voting and the capability to disseminate the relevant information and collate the votes when they come in. We can produce a vote which accords with national and international standards and all we need is for those with an interest or concern with Flamingo Land to register on the Scotland Decides website.

All that being said, there is a serious concern about the way that the Scottish Administration is behaving. For those with independence on their minds I ask, do you feel happy about independence with this lot in charge? Or do you believe that we need to fully explore what sort of country we want to live in first?

We need a National Convention in place, sooner rather than later. And we need some grown-ups in Holyrood and in the general community. But mostly we need respect for local democracy and that is clearly missing in the political establishment today.

Respect Scottish Sovereignty have submitted a petition (PE2135) demanding implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) into Scots law. This Covenant underlines our right to self-determination in international law. So far, our minister for the constitution, Angus Robertson, is not responding and is doing everything he can to avoid attending the parliamentary public petitions committee (CPPPC) as he has been requested to do. That kind of says it all about the seriousness of our administration when it comes to protecting our rights.

The time has come when we must understand that we have to do it for ourselves.

David Younger
Respect Scottish Sovereignty and Scotland Decides

www.respectscottishsovereignty.scot

www.scotlanddecides.org; you can register here (Note: You don’t have to pay the £2 registration fee in order to vote - it just means you won’t have access to the app) : https://register.scotlanddecides.org/en/welcome

You can sign the petition to implement ICCPR here: https://petitions.parliament.scot/petitions/PE2135