Scottish ministers have pledged to rescue Donald Trump’s plan for a £500m luxury golf resort after it was rejected by local planning officials last week. Sunday Times, Financial Times
First minister Alex Salmond, who has backed the development, is said to be 'furious' that councillors narrowly rejected the proposal on Thursday, by eight votes to seven.
Aberdeenshire council is to call an emergency meeting to discuss options for overturning the ruling, which has provoked a backlash from politicians who fear it will send the wrong message to foreign entrepreneurs thinking of investing in Scotland.
One senior Nationalist politician said 6,000 jobs had been threatened “just because some yahoo on the planning committee” said no.
Trump, the US property magnate, says that he received calls from two national governments offering a home for his planned £1bn golf resort within an hour of the scheme being rejected on Friday by councillors in north-east Scotland.
Trump has stressed his preference for Scotland because of the powerful ancestral pull it exerts on him – his mother is from the Isle of Lewis.