Kingask development row rumbles on

The Citizen, 16 July 1999

ST Andrews Community Council strengthened their case for the golf-related development at Kingask to go to a public inquiry this week by highlighting what they claimed were grave inaccuracies in one of the application’s key documents.

Chairman of the Community Council, Dr Frank Riddell, has written to First Minister, Donald Dewar, questioning the accuracy of the Traffic Impact Survey commissioned by Fife Council which, he said, contained some “most alarming errors.”

The most significant of these, he claimed, was the counting error of traffic levels on Friday, May 21, between the hours of 8am and 6pm, which indicated that some 3193 extra vehicles left Alexandra Place in the town than entered it.

Alexandra Place, he commented, was 100 yards long, and there were no other ways for vehicles to enter or leave, other than to go to garage areas behind the houses.

“This is an enormous error in the statistics involved,” said Dr Riddell. “In view of the size of this counting error we submit that no reliance can be placed on the analyses, traffic projections or junction loadings supplied to the committee.

“The TIA data is fatally flawed. Given that the traffic survey was the major key to the officials’ report, we ask that its conclusions be disregarded.

“The decision arrived at by councillors was based on faulty information and so should not be allowed to proceed.”

He added, however, that if the TIA was subjected to serious statistical investigation, other, more fundamental questions would emerge, regarding comparisons between the current data and that collected last September and data collected for the comparatively recent Transportation Study.

Both of the recent studies, he said, had been conducted outwith the major teaching period of the university year and, in the case of the September data, on an early closing day.

On these grounds, he appealed for the whole matter to be considered at a Planning Inquiry called by Mr Dewar.

He also sent a copy of the letter to Fife Council’s Chief Executive, Douglas Sinclair, asking him to withhold the issuing of any consent to the Kingask developers “until the First Minister has had the chance to consider the matter and to reply to our additional information.”

A decision by Fife Council’s Strategic Development Committee last week to approve the Kingask proposal proved to be by no means the end of the affair, with immediate accusations of foul play by Fife Council levelled by objectors following the decision.

Councillor Peter Douglas (Crail, Cameron and Kemback) stated that he had been telephoned by anonymous Fife Council employees, who complained of being pressurised into ‘trimming their reports, coming into line or staying silent with regards to the proposal.

He, too, called for “an enquiry independent of Fife, where evidence can be made by sworn submission so that no-one’s job is jeopardised,” adding that this “can harm no-one whose hands are clean.”

However, Fife Council reacted angrily to the allegations of misconduct, explaining that great care had been taken to ensure all the proper planning procedures had been followed.

Chairman of the Strategic Development Committee, Councillor Bill Brand, commented: “Some individuals are continuing to demonstrate a complete misunderstanding of the planning system by asking for the application to be called in.

“The opportunity for that is now past and the fact that the application has not been called in by the Secretary of State, or indeed, the First Minister, is a fair indication that we’ve acted properly in coming to our conclusions.”