Trust under fire over plan to build seventh course

Rosemary Dewar, The Citizen, 13 February 2004

St Andrews Links Trust came under fire at a special hearing into its plans to build a seventh new golf course on the outskirts of the town.

Objectors, some of them professionals concerned with statistics and economics, pulled no punches as they questioned the way the trust had demonstrated a demand for the new 18-hole course, practise area, clubhouse, maintenance facilities, access, parking, servicing areas and pathways on ground it has bought at Brownhills and Kinkell Farm.

There were also calls for an independent economic impact assessment and real concerns that the accumulated traffic from the existing new courses at St Andrews Bay, the proposed new private course at Feddinch and the new one planned by the Links Trust would be too much for St Andrews to cope with.

The community council at Boarhills supports the proposal, however.

Members believe demand has been demonstrated for it, jobs could be created and that opportunities for walkers would be improved.

However, speaking to the departure hearing in Boarhills Hall on Thursday evening last week, golfer and economist Colin McAllister, St Andrews, accused the trust of producing a ‘dodgy dossier” containing “self-serving” statistics.

Their selection of 1995 as a base for projecting growth in demand was unrepresentative” as it was an Open Championship year, he said.

Taking 1997 as a base year produced only a 1.3 per cent increase in demand instead of 25 per cent, a point backed by several other objectors.

If the trust really had £6m to spend there were better ways it could do that.

“There is a contingent liability of possibly millions of pounds to protect the links against coastal erosion,” he told the hearing.

DEMOCRATIC

Mr McAllister was one of a number of objectors to call for an end to the London entertainment booking agency (Keith Prowse) ticket deal to sell tee-times on the Old Course.

“This deal is offensive to our Scottish democratic tradition of open access and breaches the requirements of the 1974 Act that there shall be a ballot,” he told the hearing.

St Andrews Community Council planning convener Dr Ian Goudie also criticised the applicants’ statistical case for the new course and he said the proposals were in clear breach of Fife Structure Plan policy.

A full traffic impact assessment should be carried out, as the development also breached Institute of Highways and Transportation guidelines, he added.

Another prime concern of the community council was implication of the development for the St Andrews Green Belt.

Dr Goudie urged councillors to wait until it was in place before considering the application.

The Links Trust’s planning consultant Harry McNab argued that the impact of the development on the landscape would be slight.

Golf courses were an acceptable green belt use and it would “neither intrude on nor interrupt views from and to historic core of St Andrews.”

Limits had to be placed on the amount of rounds played to protect the condition of the links and, due to concern over statistics provided, figures for rounds played since 1954 had now been submitted by the trust.

Peter Mason, external relations manager for the Links Trust explained that, as a charity, the trust could not make profits, but “surpluses” which had to be reinvested in the links.

“We do tend to make surpluses,” he explained.

Fife Council east area planning team leader, Nick Brian, told the hearing that, before the application could be considered by committee, the demonstration of demand; the impact the additional course would have on the local economy and the impact traffic would have in St Andrews needed further examination.