OUR PLACE.
OUR FUTURE.
OUR BALLOCH & HALDANE.
During late 2025 and early 2026, the local community created a manifesto for the future of Balloch, Haldane and Jamestown - called a ‘Local Place Plan’ - facilitated by Balloch and Haldane Community Council.
Our new Place Plan was officially registered in July/August 2026 by our two planning authorities - Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park and West Dunbartonshire Council. We are grateful to them for funding the Plan’s preparation.
We’re now starting to implement the Plan with their help.
This website hosts the completed Plan and tells the story of how it was prepared. A big thank you to everybody who has been involved, across Balloch and Haldane and beyond. We hope you’ll find it interesting.
THE BACKSTORY
2014
The community produced Balloch and Haldane Community Action Plan.
The plan had four main themes:
Sport, recreation and local environment
Improve our local infrastructure
Young people, safety and the local economy
Develop the visitor experience
Under those four headings, the plan identified ten priority actions:
Improved range of recreational facilities
Improved quality of the local environment
Maintained and improved public transport links
Better roads paths and services
Better provision of activities for young people
Maintain police presence
Develop training and employment opportunities
Better promotion of the area and its activities
Renovation of key local landmarks
Increased range of tourist attractions & events
A decade later, the question we asked ourselves was - are those still the right things to focus on?
2025
A new opportunity arises to make an up-to-date plan for the village.
Our Community Council has made it possible by securing funding from Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park and West Dunbartonshire Council.
New planning legislation means that communities can now prepare their own plans and expect them to be taken seriously. Find out more and see some examples on the About page.
This is how we developed the new plan during late 2025 and early 2026:
Stage 1 - gathering ideas (November 2025 to February 2026): find out your ideas for Balloch & Haldane in various different ways - community drop-ins, survey, youth activities, a business event
Stage 2 - draft plan (March 2026): publish the draft Plan for everyone to check, based on the issues and aspirations that emerged during the first stage
Stage 3 - final plan (April to June 2026): update the Plan based on everyone’s feedback, before the Community Council submits it to the National Park and West Dunbartonshire Council for ‘registration’ as our Local Place Plan
Scroll down to find out more.
The first stage of the work was to gather everyone’s ideas about the future of Balloch, Haldane and Jamestown.
We did this in various ways, as described in this section.
The fundamental question we’ve been asking is: what do you want your community to be like in the future?
Stage 1 - IDEAS
COMMUNITY EVENTS & ONLINE SURVEY
Community drop-in events took place in Balloch and Haldane on the 28th and 29th November 2025. Around 45 people came along to share their suggestions about:
What’s great about the community, and what’s not so great.
Suggestions for the future, using the last community-led plan in 2014 as a starting point.
What needs to happen where, on a giant map.
Fears for the future.
The same questions could also be answered in an online survey, which was open until the end of December and had around 50 respondents.
The results make for fascinating reading. Together with the views of young people and businesses (see below), they identify clear priorities that the new Plan should address.
You can read summaries and full transcriptions of everyone’s comments in the report.
Tap the map image to what people suggested on the giant map.
Young people are the future of the community. They deserve a voice in its future.
Our 2014 Community Action Plan said that young people are a big priority for the community as a whole. Is that still the case? What do they need now?
From October 2025 to March 2026, we tapped into the ideas and creativity of young people through Haldane Youth Services and local schools.
The four maps below contain suggestions from young people at Haldane Youth Services, Our Lady & St Patricks High School, Vale of Leven Academy, and Balloch / St Kessogs Primary Schools. Red hearts indicate young people’s special places. Caption bubbles are their ideas for the future.
YOUNG PEOPLE
Jobs, training, visitor attractions and things to do also emerged as a priority in the 2014 Community Action Plan. So helping businesses to create more jobs and opportunities seems a sensible thing to think about in the new plan.
With that in mind, a business drop-in took place at lunchtime on Thursday 4th December to understand what businesses need.
Turnout was quiet with just a handful of participants, so we also made direct contact with as many local businesses as we could.
BUSINESSES
Stage 2 - DRAFT PLAN
The draft Plan brought together everyone’s ideas into one clear plan for the future.
A consultation on the draft Plan took place during March and April 2026 - online, in-person at a launch event, and a hard copy in Balloch Library.
A big thank you to the 70 people who came along to the community launch event on Monday 16 March.
There were lots of positive conversations about the draft Plan, and plenty of helpful suggestions about how to tweak it to make the final version even better.
Thank you also to those who took the time to read the draft Plan online and in the library, and provide feedback.
You can still see the summary and full version of the draft Plan, although they have now been superseded by the final plan.
Everyone’s comments on the draft Plan, and how they influenced the final Plan, can be seen here.
STAGE 3 - Final PLAN
The final Plan has landed!
In early June 2026, the Community Council considered everyone’s comments on the draft Plan and agreed how the final Plan should be updated (for details, see here). The Plan was then submitted to the National Park and West Dunbartonshire Council for ‘registration’.
The plan was registered by the National Park and West Dunbartonshire Council for July and August 2026 respectively.
You can see the final Plan below or download it here.