Traffic plan rethink for golfing complex

Rosemary Dewar, The Citizen, 20 February 2004

Increased traffic flow to and from the £60 million St Andrews Bay Golf Resort and Spa has been blamed on world events beyond the control of the developers.

Heads of Fife Council’s planning and transportation services have conceded that traffic has been greater than originally envisaged because much of the target clientele - Americans travelling to the area by air and coach - has not materialised.

Council officials have also admitted that changes to the legal agreement in relation to traffic management at the resort will have to be made.

A meeting of the local authority’s environmental and development committee in Glenrothes heard that the matter had to be tackled so that the position of further developments proposed in and around St Andrews could he clarified.

Reporting to the committee, Jim Birrell and Nick Brian of the planning service, and Derek Crow of the transportation service, said: ”It is essential that a travel plan is agreed with the hotel, with new customer group targets which relate to the present and future position."

Relevant heads of service are to negotiate a finalised travel plan with the hotel, with new annual targets, to be put in place from April 1.

The report stated that St Andrews Bay employs 240 full-time and 120 part-time staff, although pedestrian access routes across and around the site still have to be finalised.

It had been decided by the local liaison committee that a footpath from Brownhills, to be built by the developers, need not be pursued. It was being reviewed in conjunction with a new planning application for a development on nearby adjacent land, said the officials, and discussions relating to the provision and timing of a surfaced multi-use path, and how it was to be funded, needed to be taken further.

Since it opened in summer 2001, St Andrews Bay’s original business and marketing rationale had “changed considerably."

Following on from the events of September 11, 2001, and the concerns over foot and mouth in Scotland, transatlantic and North American customers did not travel in the numbers first envisaged, a situation which had continued.

It was anticipated that at least 60 per cent of the hotel business would come from the US, but that only accounted for about 25 per cent of current trade. World events could lead to a further deterioration of the numbers of visitors travelling from North America, the report explained.

Recent hearings into applications for planning permission for a seventh public golf course and ancillary buildings at Brownhills and Kinkell Farms, and a further private golf course and clubhouse, at Feddinch Mains, have heard concerns that the St Andrews Bay developers flouted conditions imposed over traffic movements, and of damage done to road surfaces by heavy construction vehicles.

Peter Milne, east area transportation leader, said St Andrews Bay had paid for resurfacing to the back road through Stravithie and strengthened the bridge near the Memorial Hospital in St Andrews.

The bridge work had cost £120,000, and any subsequent costs of road surfacing would have to be absorbed by the council.