Gordon Berry, The Courier, 10 June 1999

A national conservation body has re-entered the debate currently raging over pressure on St Andrews from developers wishing to capitalise on the Home of Golf’s worldwide fame.

The Association for the Protection of Rural Scotland, which has already strongly objected to the plans for the £50 million Kingask hotel, leisure and golf development, has highlighted the possibility of “irreversible damage” to the St Andrews landscape.

The entire front page of the association’s latest newsletter has been devoted to the issue, under the title “Crazy Golf or Golf Crazy."

APRS director Joan Geddes has raised areas of concern and highlighted sections of Fife Council’s own recent St Andrews Strategic Study to illustrate her points.

Ms Geddes said that the study came to 20 conclusions, among them that the landscape setting of St Andrews is crucial to its setting and must be protected and enhanced.

She also referred to the stated need for containment of the spread of the town, with a green belt to be seriously considered as way of achieving this.

The director’s hard-hitting comments come at a time when anger has been expressed over Fife Council’s decision to take the three applications for Kingask, Feddinch and Scooniehill out of the hands of locally elected councillors.

The town’s preservation trust has already appealed for the whole issue to be called in and dealt with by the Scottish Office, and next week the community council will follow suit.

Questions have been raised over the Labour administration’s partiality and the way the authority has handled the matter procedurally.

Ms Geddes said that if the applications were approved, there would be a “dramatic effect” on the visual amenity and setting of the town, and even individually the effect would be significant.

The director said that APRS would be submitting comments to Fife Council in relation to the local plan, the strategic study, the transportation strategy, the tourism management plan and a landscape character assessment.

“APRS accepts that golf courses need not unduly change the landscape and golf courses can, and do, exist happily within green belts,” said Ms Geddes. “It is the view of the association that this number of new golf courses, if approved, would destroy the character of the landscape whether designated green belt or not.

“Most worrying are the buildings proposed in association with the developments. Hotels and lodge accommodation cannot be built without irreversible damage to the countryside.”