Community chief hits back in planning row

Michael Alexander, The Courier, 3 March 2001

The vice-chairman of St Andrews community council, Dr Frank Rlddell, has bit back at two senior Fife Council officials who told The Courier this week that no comparison could be made between the £25 million golf and leisure developments at Scooniehill and the St Andrews Bay scheme at Kingask on the outskirts of St Andrews.

Fife Council planning spokesman Bill Kay said on Wednesday that it was “absolutely wrong” to compare the two planning applications and presuppose the outcome of a public inquiry.

This view was backed by the council’s chief executive Douglas Sinclair, who said it was “misguided and ill-founded” to compare two separate applications where different circumstances might prevail.

He also rejected Dr Riddell’s claims that this raised “considerable doubt” over the quality of advice given by Fife Council’s planning service to councillors, pointing out the council successfully defends its positions on 80% of planning appeals.

But yesterday Dr Riddell said he had been “amazed” by the council’s reaction and said officials "should not be allowed to wriggle off the hook that easily.”

He urged the two councillors to take a closer look at the Scottish Executive reporter’s “overwhelming rejection” of the Scooniehill planning appeal.

He said it was perfectly clear from this that doubt must be cast on the quality of advice coming from the planning service, and he stressed again that if the Kingask application had gone to a public inquiry instead of being decided centrally by Fife Council then it too would probably have been rejected.

Dr Riddell said, “Irrespective of the differences between the two applications, paragraph 66 of the reporter’s Scooniehill decision is directly relevant.

“He makes it clear that in areas of great landscape value, environmental policies should take precedence over economic policies.

“Economic policies were used, wrongly as the reporter makes clear, as the driving force to push through Kingask,” Dr Riddell said.

“The reporter also makes it clear that the visual impact upon St Andrews is a deciding criterion and also that such hotel/accommodation developments should be located within the urban envelope and not in the countryside.

“Both of these planning policies were relevant and were deliberately ignored in the Kingask debacle. These criteria would certainly have resulted in a public inquiry rejecting Kingask...councillors are there to defend the public and the environment of Fife from faulty decisions by their officials.”

“Councillor Kay should now be asking why his officials got it so spectacularly wrong on Scooniehill and, by implication, on Kingask.

“He should realise the loss of confidence in Fife Council’s planning department is widespread. There is a mess there waiting to be sorted - and he should get on with it.”

Last night, however, Councillor Kay re-emphasised his assertion that the Scooniehill and Kingask applications could not be directly compared because the economic benefits of Scooniehill had been on a much smaller scale.

He said it was hypothetical to say what might have happened if Kingask had gone to a public inquiry and stressed the council had “followed procedure” in both cases.

He said the reporter had concluded that, in this instance, the impact on the area of great landscape value outweighed the potential benefits the development would have brought for tourism.

However, his interpretation was that the decision was “finely balanced” and could not be compared with Kingask.

Councillor Kay also said the matter raised the issue of local democracy. Since Cameron Community Council and local Fife councillor Peter Douglas had originally voted for Scooniehill, he said it might be fair to argue that local people’s views had been “trampled on”.