Council Tax to help foot bill for legal action

St Andrews Citizen, 26 May 2000

Council tax payers in Fife will have to help foot the bill for a legal action brought by a group of St Andrews campaigners against Fife Council over the St Andrews Bay Development.

At the Court of Session last week, Lord Bonomy made it plain in his statement that he was awarding 100 per cent of costs to St Andrews Bay Development Ltd against the petitioners, The Judicial Review Group. He also awarded 50 per cent of the expenses to Fife Council against the group.

Protesters fighting the move to bring the multi-million pound golf resort, spa and conference centre to St Andrews had brought a legal challenge against Fife Council,s decision to approve the scheme to the Court of Session.

The Judicial Review Group, headed by Ms Penny Uprichard, of St Andrews raised a fighting fund of £88,000 from local and international pledges to mount the challenge.

Members claimed that planning permission should be withdrawn on the grounds that the council failed to ask for an in-depth study on the impact of the development on the local environment.

However, early last month, Lord Bonomy said the case could not continue due to the time it had taken to get to court.

He ruled the local authority had approved the development after considering all the relevant environmental issues.

The petitioners argued that the five-month time lapse was due to the need to fund-raise to launch the challenge. However, that reason was not deemed to be satisfactory by the court.

Said Harry Tait, of Fife Council's legal services: "The judgement makes it clear that the council's position has been sustained. The petition was dismissed. The court made it clear what it thought about the environmental assessment and found in favour of the council for 50 per cent of the expenses.

"If the court had been unhappy it was open to it to agree that there were no expenses due by either party.

"The petitioners have to look for 50 per cent of our expenses and their own and those of the developers. They have achieved nothing. The council tax payer in Fife will have to pay 50 per cent of the expenses in an action the council did not seek."

A spokesperson for St Andrews Bay Development Ltd said that, by awarding all expenses to the company, Lord Bonomy was reflecting the original judgement in which he not only dismissed the petition on the grounds of delay but said that, on the basis of the evidence put before him, he could not have upheld the petition on any other grounds, had it been necessary to take them into account.

"The company was confident throughout the judicial review that its position, and its conduct during the course of the planning process, would be supported in full and that has proved to be the case," he commented.

"It is unfortunate that much of this money, which in our view has been cruelly wasted, had to come from the pockets of council tax payers in Fife when it could have been better employed in supporting their council services and funding employment opportunities for those who need them most."

Ms Uprichard maintained that Lord Bonomy had made it clear he was unhappy with the council's role in the matter.

"He was talking about various issues that there hadn't been time to decide," she told the Citizen.

"He said he would have accepted submission for the petitioners that the council had not given adequate reasons for granting the application, in respect that they had not stated clearly what their position was in relation to the development plan.

"That is essentially the case made in paragraph 14 of our petition, which stated: 'That further, and in any event, the first respondents (the council) acted in a procedurally unfair manner on granting the application. They had a duty to give reasons for their determination as whether the application was or was not in accordance with the development plan.'"

Ms Uprichard said the exercise had been worthwhile and the majority of people she had spoken to agreed.