Monday October 5th 2026
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Written by Local Democracy Reporter, Stuart Sommerville
A snack bar operator has been ordered to shut up shop for breaking planning rules – but nobody has complained in three years about the business.
Now Nettie Anderson faces losing her livelihood if she has to close the snack bar in the grounds of Bathgate’s Kaim Park Hotel.
Most of her customers are homeless living in the hotel which is now used as a House of Multiple Occupation (HMO), or residents of neighbouring flats.
Planners said there were no objections to the planning application but local councillor Willie Boyle told a meeting of the Local Review Body: “I’ve had complaints.”
Nettie bought the snack bar as an operating concern 18 months ago as her retirement, after a lifetime working in the trade alongside her family, who used to run a chip shop in the town.
She told the Local Democracy Service that she did not think she had to apply for planning permission because the snack bar was on private ground. “That law changed in 2016”, she said.
Having applied for and being refused permission, Nettie appealed to the Local Review Body.
A planning officer told the committee the snack-bar occupies three parking spaces at the Kaim Park Hotel which has been used to house the homeless for several years.
Nettie said she can serve 45 to 50 people a day until she closes at 3pm.
When the LDRS visited the snack bar it was busy with customers and a delivery service – taking out orders. Many of her customers are living in the Kaim Park and she prepares hot food for collection before she closes.
Nettie attended the committee meeting but was not allowed to speak. She was furious at the decision and angry that councillors were not told that she had offered mitigations such as extra screening from the road side or to move the snack-bar to another point in the car park.
“This is a joke they’re going to put me out of business. This is my pension.” she told the LDRS.
She added: “I’ve not had one complaint. We get loads of people, a lot from the homeless and a lot from cars and a lot of delivery companies.
“There are flats beside me and we have at least 15 people who come from there for snacks and not one of them has ever complained.”
Nettie said that a suggestion, made at committee, that the homeless could eat at the cafe in the nearby Tesco was ridiculous given the prices of food and coffee there.
Councillor Willie Boyle said he had heard a lot of complaints from neighbours and argued that the snack-bar was far from the town centre and in the “wrong place”.
He said: “This unit appeared a few years ago and became an eyesore for people coming and going from Bathgate.
“Here we are being asked to consider a retail unit far from a town centre that’s full to capacity with food shops. There’s no justification for this retail unit in this vicinity. It jars with the whole environment.”
The snack bar sits behind the boundary wall of the former hotel overlooking the busy Guildiehaugh roundabout. The access to the car park is off Edinburgh Road.
Councillor Boyle said the proposal was “ ifficult to separate from the hotel” because it had applied for permission to convert what was the bar and restaurant area into more rooms. If there is a need to provide food, the HMO already has facilities, he told the meeting.
“This is wrong”, he said.
However Councillor Alison Adamson countered that, as an HMO facility the council was “possibly its biggest single customer”
She added: “The one thing I look for in these applications is the complaints by neighbours. There were none. There were no complaints from neighbouring properties.
“This facility has been in operation for quite some time. During all that time you would expect, if it’s such a problem, there would have been a lot more complaints, a lot more noise about it.”
In its reason for refusal, the council said: “Given the scale and siting of the Portacabin, the proposed development is considered inappropriate for this location and results in unacceptable impact on the visual appearance of the locality. Further, the proposal appears incongruous within its surrounding context and results in over-development of the site.”
Councillor Adamson questioned those reasons saying it was difficult to see the snack bar because it was hidden behind a solid wall. It didn’t obstruct pedestrians and, while councillors were on a site visit, customers were arriving and leaving by car without causing issues for the traffic.
“I am minded to approve planning consent, with conditions applied”, she told the meeting.
However Councillor Boyle’s move to refuse won the vote.
Nettie told the LDRS after the meeting that she had spoken to the local MP Kirsteen Sullivan and was determined to keep the business going.
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