Question campaign over £50m leisure complex

The Courier, 8 February 2000

A national conservation body which warned that the £50 million hotel, golf and leisure complex at Kingask, near St Andrews, would ruin the east Fife landscape, has launched a campaign aimed at gauging opinion on the need to protect Scotland’s countryside.

The Association for the Protection of Rural Scotland has sent out 20,000 questionnaires which ask people how much they care for the environment and whether they think green belts should be given greater priority by local authorities.

Other issues covered include whether city brown-field sites should be developed before greenfield sites and the problems which might arise if rural post offices are forced to close.

The posting of the questionnaires come just weeks after Fife Council officials indicated that there was no place for green belts anywhere in Fife.

The decision has yet to go to further consultation but it has already prompted concern by various groups and individuals in St Andrews who feel that a green belt should be seriously considered as a means of protecting and enhancing the character of the town.

A green belt was also favoured by the majority of people who responded to the St Andrews Strategic Study in 1998.

However, the local authority has ruled out the provision of a green belt for the town because of “modest” development pressures as well as a “widespread and persistent misapprehension" that it meant a no-build zone in perpetuity.

APRS chairman Robin Salvesen said yesterday, “Without doubt Scotland’s greatest national asset is our wonderful countryside, appreciated by those of us who live here and by many thousands of visitors each year. The character of Scotland’s rural towns and villages is fast disappearing wit the loss of essential services and the introduction of suburban developments. Throughout the country familiar green spaces are being lost to new development, while thousands of equally suitable derelict sites ignored.

“Communities and individuals faced with unwelcome developments in their area frequently feel powerless to make their voices heard.”

As one of the many national conservation bodies which objected to Kingask before the development was controversially approved by Fife Council, the APRS recently gave its “100% backing” to the group which is in the midst of a legal battle to stop construction at the site, which has been under development for six months.

The St Andrews-based Review Funding Association is seeking a judicial review of the award of planning permission to St Andrews Bay Development Ltd.

It is claiming that the local authority acted illegally during the planning process.

The group claims that the council failed to properly consider the impact the development would have on the environment.

Four days of submission have already been heard at the Court of Session in Edinburgh over the past month, with more still to come.