Dewar told to 'call-in' St Andrews golf plans

James Rougvie, The Scotsman, 2 June 1999

Donald Dewar could be asked to call in three contentious golf schemes around St Andrews in an attempt by the community council to halt the projects.

Earlier this year, Fife Council took the decisions over the proposals, which would cost £100 million and create up to 1,000 jobs, out of the hands of councillors in the north-east of Fife, arguing that there were strategic issues affecting the region as a whole and not just St Andrews.

Initially the north-east councillors’ planning committee had rejected a plan for a hotel, conference centre and courses at Kingask, to the south of the town, but the developers came back with an amended proposal which coincided with the submission of two more golf-related schemes on the outskirts.

Opponents of the developments claim that St Andrews, regarded as the home of golf, would be turned into a golfing theme park, leaving its famous links, which are already near to capacity, unable to cope with an additional influx of visitors.

Fife Council is gathering responses for what will be a strategic overview before a decision is made, but the community council is poised to argue that the implications for St Andrews have international ramifications.

Its chairman, Frank Riddell, said yesterday that he believed one of the jewels of Scottish medieval architecture could be destroyed if the developments were approved.

Opponents of the plans have argued that the town, laid out to accommodate pilgrims travelling to the most important Christian centre of medieval times after Santiago in northern Spain, is unsuitable for the amounts of traffic that would be generated by the schemes.

In recent years, at least one of the medieval buildings has been rendered uninhabitable by traffic vibration which has damaged the fabric of the stonework.

Dr Riddell added that without the intervention of Mr Dewar, the First Minister, and a subsequent public inquiry, the decision would be left in the hands of councillors, most of whom are not locally based and had never visited the sites.

“We believe that not only the interests of St Andrews but the interests of Scotland and the international community would be best served if the matter was handled by the First Minister,’ he said.

In addition to opposition to the proposals from national and local bodies, nearly 100 responses have been received by the community council from local people, and Dr Riddell said that nearly all had been unanimously in favour of the establishment of a green belt around St Andrews and an end to the town’s expansion.

It is understood that the community council will decide next week whether or not to ask Mr Dewar to step in, and it will use statutory documents, designed to protect the environment of St Andrew, to support its case. These include the local plan, Fife Council’s own strategic plan, the St Andrews strategic study and the St Andrews transportation plan which consider in detail the growth potential of the town.

A tourism development plan also indicates that tourism is nearing its maximum potential and a landscape assessment has also concluded that the town is at its landscape capacity and that there should only be limited development to the west.