'Grave concern' over proposals

Gordon Berry, The Courier, 1 June 1999

St Andrews Community Council is “gravely concerned” over huge commercial developments associated with plans for new golf courses around the town.

The applications, it is claimed, are not about golf but are about “exploiting the name of St Andrews for associated development.”

The points have been made by the community council in a detailed response requested by Fife Council as cart of a strategic overview on golf courses and associated developments.

The report is being prepared in the wake of the council’s controversial decision to take final decisions out of the hands of local councillors and call them in to the centrally based administration controlled strategic development committee.

The applications involve land at Kingask, Feddinch and Scooniehill, and projects worth well over £100 million in total.

It has been claimed that the traffic impact from just one of the developments could lead to strangulation of an already congested medieval town centre.

In their response the community council pointed out they worked in conjunction with the local authority to establish the St Andrews strategic study.

Chairman Dr Frank Riddell said literature had been distributed to almost every household in St Andrews and 900 responses had been received.

“This unprecedented response, which was virtually unanimously in favour of the establishment of a green belt of some description around St Andrews and a halting of expansion of the town, indicates the views of our community.”

Dr Riddell said St Andrews was famous for links golf and that was the reason that golfers came to the town.

The applications, he said, were all concerned with parkland golf and did not contribute to satisfying the main demand.

“Furthermore, the large numbers of golfers that these developments would bring to St Andrews would decrease the chances of visitors’ success in the ballot for Old Course times.

“Reducing the prospect of visitors laying the Old Course will correspondingly reduce one major attraction of St Andrews to visiting golfers.”

Dr Riddell said each development claimed to create many hundreds of jobs and when these were combined with employment at the new Gateway Centre and a proposed hotel at Kinkell, over 1000 new jobs were in question.

“If Fife requires jobs to relieve its unemployment problems it requires them in central or west Fife, not in or around St Andrews.

“Kingask, for example, must be the most remote part of Fife for an unemployed person in Dunfermline.

“The labour force for such new development will come either from Dundee or by influx of new residents into the St Andrews area.

“The pressure on housing and infrastructure in St Andrews will be enormous and will throw into question the conclusions of the St Andrews Strategic Study and the Landscape Assessment Study of St Andrews.”

Dr Riddell said in the letter that Madras College was already bursting at the seams, the health centre was under immense pressure, primary schools were nearing their limit for pupils and there was insufficient social housing available.

Turning to traffic, he said the main thrust of Fife Council’s transportation plan had been to keep vehicles out of the centre of the town.

It was not unknown, he said, for gridlock to occur in St Andrews, particularly in the Bell Street, South Street, St Mary’s Place, West Port, Market Street and Church Street areas.

Acceptance of only one application, he said, would drive a “coach and horses” through the transportation strategy.