Residents express lorry traffic fears

Rosemary Dewar, East Fife Mail, 1 December 1999

Villagers living along a route being used by lorries servicing a multi-million pound development in St Andrews fear for their children’s safety.

Now their local councillor says he wants to know why the lorries are being allowed to use the small rural roads.

Crail councillor, Peter Douglas, said officials had assured him conditions imposed on the £50 million Kingask golfing, and conference centre development on the outskirts of St Andrews would be watertight.

I am not convinced they are, either regarding the routes being followed or over the number of lorries travelling on them,” he told the East Fife Mail.

"Who is monitoring the number of lorries? I want to know what monitoring processes there are, and how they are being carried out.”

A planning agreement restricts the number of lorries travelling to and from the site in anyone day to no more than 10.

The lorries are also supposed to follow set routes to St Andrews - the A915 from the south and the A91 from the west.

“If any other routes are being used, then the agreement may be being breached,” commented Jim Birrell, east area planning manager.

A spokesman for developers, St Andrews Bay Development Company, said he was confident the conditions of the approval were being adhered to.

However, residents along the B941 through the tiny villages of Woodside, New Gilston, Peat Inn and the B940 through Radernie, claim the lorries are not following the correct routes in taking material from local quarries to Kingask.

Haulage contractors, Thistle Aggregates, D. Heeps Ltd. and W. & J. Collier, all confirmed they were transporting material to Kingask.

A spokesperson for Collier commented: “It would be much easier for us if we could go through St Andrews, but the maps we’ve been given say we can’t.”

However, a spokesman for Heeps wasn’t aware of any stipulated route.

“Where there are no preferred routes, we take the shortest possible to use the least fuel,” he explained.

Willie Oswald, commercial director of Thistle Aggregates, said his firm was given specified routes to follow by the developer.

“I am presuming we are abiding by those rules and regulations and routes,” he commented.

“If our drivers are going outwith them I will be looking into it.

” Parents who wait with their children for school buses along the route described the situation as an accident waiting to happen.

“Some of the lorries come very close and they travel at quite a speed,” said one mum.

“I’d hate to think what will happen on an icy morning if these lorries can’t stop in time behind a school bus picking up children.”

“I counted them one day and there were 12 in the space of about 10 minutes.”

Nick Brian, east area development control team leader, said appropriate action would be taken “if and when” it was brought to the council’s attention that planning conditions were being breached.

He pointed out that not all the HGVs on those particular roads belonged to the Kingask development.