US BILLIONAIRE Donald Trump has ignored repeated pleas to move his planned Scottish golf course away from a protected environment site, despite being told such a move would virtually secure official approval.
Documents show officials from Aberdeenshire Council have suggested on several occasions that the tycoon should rethink his controversial plan to site nine holes on a unique coastal dune system containing a dome of sand.
Planning permission for hi
s golf development at Menie Links would be easier to obtain if Trump moved the course a few yards inland and away from the dunes, officials hint.
But the New York property developer and his staff have told the planners that they will not change their minds. According to minutes of a meeting between the Trump team and officials last month, project director Neil Hobday said the tycoon's "vision" was to create "a world class championship course and development of the sand dome is a key part of this. It was felt that to remove holes from this part of the site would result in a second-rate course."
Planning consultants working for Trump said they had not been given the "flexibility" to take the holes out of the Special Site of Scientific Interest on which the developer wants to build the course.
The newly released documents also reveal:
• Consultants working for Trump opposed a decision to grant government advisers more time to prepare an environmental report on the site;
• The consultants tried to get the Ministry of Defence to relax restrictions on the height of buildings so the resort hotel can be built on a bigger scale;
• The perimeter of the 1,100-acre site will be enclosed by a wire fence with restricted access points.
Trump announced plans to build his £1bn Trump International Golf Links resort at Balmedie, 10 miles north of Aberdeen, last year, saying the scale of the investment would be the biggest in the north-east of Scotland since the discovery of North Sea oil and would revitalise the local economy.
As well as building the "best seaside course in the world", he intended to develop a second course, a 450-room hotel, 500 luxury homes, and hundreds of holiday apartments.
But his plan to build part of his signature course on an officially protected, wildlife-rich natural dune system, has brought objections from environmental bodies including Scottish Natural Heritage, the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency, the RSPB and the Scottish Wildlife Trust.
In a response last May, SNH said that building golf holes among the dunes would "effectively destroy" the conservation site and urged Trump to move the course onto nearby farmland within his estate.
There have so far been 78 objections against the development lodged with the council and only 11 letters of support.
In a letter to the Trump organisation in June, Lesley Aitken, the Aberdeenshire planning official assigned to the case, says it is clear that the northern area of the development lies within the Foveran Links SSSI, "a dynamic and mobile area of the coast where the vegetation present is entirely dependant on this continuous change. This would be lost if the development is permitted."
She adds that it would appear from discussions (with SNH) that there is little scope for removal of its objection as it is unlikely that location of the golf course will change.
The council was told by Ironside Farrar, Trump's Edinburgh-based consultants, there would be no layout changes.
Reaffirming Trump's threat to pull out of the project unless his plans are accepted in their entirety, the firm said: "Without the ability to form the course in this location, there would be no basis for the resort, and it would not proceed."
Trump's intransigence will heap pressure on the council's Formartine area planning committee, which is due to decide the first stage of the planning application on September 18.
If councillors reject the plan on environmental grounds, they risk the wrath of the north-east business community, which welcomes Trump's claims that the project will create more than 1,000 permanent jobs and inject around £47m into the local economy annually.
jwatson@scotlandonsunday.com