Kingask objectors fail in court bid to halt £50m development

The Citizen, 7 April 2000

A last-ditch attempt by objectors to have planning permission for the £50 million golf development at Kingask revoked has been dismissed.

At the Court of Session in Edinburgh last Thursday, Lord Bonomy ruled that the legal challenge brought against developers, St Andrews Bay Ltd, should be thrown out due to the length of time it had taken for the case to come to court.

He declared that to leave the 520-acre development in limbo after a substantial amount of work - over £1 million - had already been carried out, would result in a “blot on the landscape” at the rural site.

The Judicial Review Group, headed by Ms Penny Uprichard, of St Andrews, had put forward their claim that planning permission be withdrawn on the grounds that the local authority had failed to ask for an in-depth study to be carried out on the impact the development would have on the local environment.

However, Judge Bonomy ruled that Fife Council had given their approval to the scheme after considering “all the relevant environmental issues.”

In summing up he added, “It follows that nothing would be gained by quashing the decision made and requiring the reprocessing and reconsideration of the application in the light of an environmental statement.”

The Judicial Review Group had explained that the time lapse of five months between the proposal being approved in July and their submitting a petition to the High Court in November had been due to the necessity of fundraising to launch the challenge, but their explanation was not held to be satisfactory by the court.

Operations Director for St Andrews Bay Development Ltd, lain MacKinnon, later welcomed the court’s ruling, saying that the 500 construction and 270 resort jobs created by the development had been secured.

He predicted that the project would inject £14 million into the local economy in the shape of salaries and services during the first full year of operations.