Petitioners reply

Letter to Editor, St Andrews Citizen, 2 June 2000

(Miss) P M Uprichard for The Review Funding Association

I refer to your news item last week about the expenses of the Kingask Judicial Review.

1  The fund-raising group backing the action was the Review Funding Association, not the Judicial Review Group.

2  With reference to your mention of a 'five months time lapse,' the 'delay' was not five months, but three and a half months (the Judge agreed that it was not possible for the petitioners to take action until after the Community Council had made a decision on the matter.)

Mr Harry Tait, of Fife Council's legal services, stated that "The petitioners....have achieved nothing."

Mr Harry Tait is mistaken. The petitioners won on 'title and interest,' which means that the next petitioners to bring such a case will find their path easier. They lost on 'delay,' because of the need to fund-raise. The fact that their cause raised over £88,000 demonstrates the support throughout St Andrews and Fife, and further afield.

Because of the case the news of this battle spread far and wide; there are frequent references to Kingask in current planning articles. (A recent article in a national newspaper (May 20), refers to 'a major planning debacle over a £50 million golf and conference centre development planned for Kingask on the outskirts of St Andrews.....Scooniehill.... will come before the planners in the near future amid fears that the ancient streets of the Fife town, regarded as the home of golf, could become a traffic-jammed golf theme park.')

The petitioners, and others, also gained much knowledge of court and other procedures, which will be invaluable when another legal action is envisaged.

The petitioners lost the case. They were not, however, the subject of such comments from the court as were directed against Fife Council. The Judge was unhappy with the role of the local authority in this matter. After consideration, he decided that justice would be done by awarding them only 50 per cent of their costs. Mr Tait is wrong to imply that this is common practice. The Judge said that he was departing from the usual rule that 'expenses followed success.'

He also said the Council had pointedly failed to say that it was an assessment of the likely impact on the environment that led to the decision that a statutory environmental statement was not required. It had been stated by the Council's legal representative that the decision had not been recorded anywhere; the Council could not say if it had been made after one meeting or several, it could not say what officials were involved or on what basis the decision was made.

Mr Tait's concern for the council tax payers is touching (and I hope it particularly extends to those who generously gave the case so much financial support). I expect he is also concerned that presumably council tax payers will have to foot the bill for the £1 million 'lost' by Fife Council in connection with a miscalculation over domestic rates.

At the end of the Citizen news item, there is recorded the fact that the Judge (when reviewing matters which there had not been time to hear fully in court), said that he would have agreed with the petitioners that the Council had not given adequate reasons for granting the application - they had not stated clearly what their position was in relation to the development plan. The relevant paragraph in the petitioners' petition, with which he was agreeing, begins: "That further, and in any event, the first respondents (Fife Council) acted in a procedurally unfair manner in granting the application."

It should be remembered that this development was imposed on St Andrews, having been turned down twice by the East Area Development Committee before it was called in to Glenrothes and approved by the Strategic Development Committee.

On the above evidence I would say that Mr Bill Brand's recent comment, that "the court's decision (showed) that the planning decision was sound," is at variance with the facts.

St Andrews Bay

J S Holdsworth

I noted with interest the outcome of the case at the Court of Session regarding the legal action brought against Fife Council and the St Andrews Bay Development Ltd.

I have no connection with either group, other than as a council tax payer, and although I am delighted with the outcome, I do resent the situation where the council tax payers of Fife are having to pay for a legal challenge that has manifestly failed.

From the beginning of this sorry saga the company and council have been found to have acted correctly as far as the legal situation is concerned. How then can a spokesperson for the losers claim that the "exercise has been worthwhile?"

One can only hope that other plans for other golf courses will now be revised and resubmitted as quickly as possible with the same result as the development that is now taking place.

If Fife Council apply the same criteria to other projects as they appear to have done in this recent case, then I for one will be delighted. My only concern is that there might be other legal challenges that the already overburdened tax payers of Fife are expected to fund just to satisfy what appears to be a vocal minority of residents.