Approved
(Copies of Agendas and Minutes of the Community Council are held at Fife Council’s Local Office, St Mary’s Place and the Town Library, Church Square. Those from late 1997 on are on-line at http://www.louisxiv.demon.co.uk/standrewscc/)
Chair: Donald Macgregor
Les Beech, Bette Christie, Ken Crichton, George Davidson, Richard Douglas, Ken Fraser, Ian Goudie, Stuart Holdsworth, Chris Lesurf, Pete Lindsay, Donald Macgregor, Keith McCartney, Elise Methven, Joe Peterson, Bruce Ryan, Carole Tricker, Penny Uprichard.
Alec Yabrov, Ben Reilly.
Jane Ann Liston, Bill Sangster.
Patrick Marks, Ewen Sparks, Dennis Macdonald, Frances Melville, Sheila Black.
June 5.3 Hospital/Health Centre: para starting “Bruce Ryan said that he and Chris Lesurf ...” should read “Bruce Ryan said that Bette Christie and Chris Lesurf ...”
Corrected minutes were approved.
Approved
The St Andrews sign and community council arms at the A91 entrance to town had been removed, but recovered, and is back in place. Cllr Sangster has asked for a more permanent method of mounting the sign as this is the second occurrence. He also thought that when the new lighting is installed on the road one should illuminate the sign area and perhaps discourage this sort of occurance.
He has had problems getting public liability insurance as St Andrews in Bloom is a private organisation. Available schemes seem to be for short period events up to 10 days, not a display for the whole summer. He asked if the community council would be prepared to allow its public liability insurance cover to be used for this community project. He has checked all the necessary details with Fife Council and this appears to be permissible, but obviously community council has to actually give its permission. If this would cost anything extra, St Andrews in Bloom would cover that excess.
Meeting agreed, subject to confirmation to us from Fife Council that this is a legitimate use.
Agreed, Bruce Ryan to confirm use.
The Alliance is nine years old, during which time it has done a lot for the young people of St Andrews and a few older residents. After the attempts in recent years to get community backing for a twinning project failed, the Alliance committee has agreed to focus on the cultural links side; in effect carry on as usual without seeking to expand the links. He asked if this change in formal direction met with the approval of community council as community representatives (and in some ways the parent body of the Alliance). No one had a problem with this.
Agreed
Although Cllr Bill Sangster had not wanted to touch on the new roundabout, which he felt was controversial, Pete Lindsay was happy to praise it as he said it made traffic flow much clearer now vehicles went round the roundabout rather than across it, regularising traffic flow. Donald Macgregor noted that he had heard contrary opinions and Cllr Sangster said that he’d heard from bus and lorry drivers who were unhappy.
She had attended this regular event organised by Fife Council on the Sunday immediately before this community council meeting and was pleased to see the return of the traditional fine weather after last year’s downpours had forced it to be postponed at the last minute. She noted that the motorcade of vintage cars had performed their traditional drive through St Andrews and surrounding areas, somewhat faster than expected so there was no problem with traffic circulation at City Road, she suggested.
[May 4.4.2.] She has heard from someone from Kincaple who intended to cycle in to St Andrews during the Open, to avoid the traffic, but who had heard a rumour that the whole cycle track would be closed. Cllr Liston reiterated that only a small section of the track was to be closed, closest to St Andrews, and that the police would be assisting cyclists cross the main stream of traffic on the A91 to and from the main open section of track. The A91 would also be subject to an extended 30mph zone.
[June 4.4.4.] She’d mentioned last month the problems of developers giving de facto street names, sometimes inappropriately. Another location this had happened was the recent flats west of the West Port which are giving addresses as South Street or even West Port Lane. She wasn’t sure of the correct address but was sure those were not it, and were potentially confusing. She will continue to watch this issue lest individual developers end up naming the streets of St Andrews.
[June 4.3.5.] Environmental Services are now beginning a review of options for business waste recycling. They had wanted to introduce domestic recycling first. Now this is substantially in place recycling can expand to business waste. Waste reduction targets will not be met without dealing with recyclable business waste.
She noted that on the occasion of the Funeral of Prof. Whyte, former moderator of the Church of Scotland, the bell (in the town hall) had been rung 85 times to match his years.
She suggested that some formal record be kept of the occasions it has acted as a passing bell for prominent and worthy citizens and perhaps combined with a board somewhere in the town hall explaining something of the bell’s history – such as its casting in 1617 possibly for James VI’s golden jubilee. She asked community council’s thoughts on whether some form of explanatory board would be acceptable for an application to the Common Good Fund, particularly as the town hall is a Common Good property.
Donald Macgregor was concerned about how the details of a scheme of ringing the bell and updating any such board would work? Ken Fraser wondered if a book would be a more practical record of such use. Chris Lesurf wondered if this would be better dealt with by the Preservation Trust. The meeting seemed somewhat uncertain at the sudden presentation of so complex an idea as funding an information board, so Donald Macgregor suggested the idea be returned to next month after some reflection.
August Agenda
Looking back to last month's meeting Ian Goudie apologised to community council for the error over the Core Policies document which had indeed been in the information provided to community council as part of the local/structure plan documentation, but had been overlooked by various members of the planning committee in the sheer volume of information associated with the local and structure plans review.
Circulated at the meeting
Present: I Goudie, P Uprichard, G Davidson, B Christie. Apologies: P Lindsay, B Ryan, R Douglas.
The Committee had a brief discussion on a site for a school in St. Andrews, and wanted to check whether (and if so how much of) Madras, South Street is a listed building.
The Committee considered that a school could be rebuilt on the site at Kilrymont. The main drawback would be access for the school buses. It might also be possible to build on Station Park. This would be sensible in terms of the remaining proportion of pupils that need to be bussed in, even assuming a N.E. Fife school is built as well. There could also be enough space for playing fields alongside the school. The danger is that if one were to go for Kilrymont, Station Park would be sold off and developed in its entirety. It seems worth exploring if an environmentally suitable solution can be found for Station Park.
1. 4B Bell Street form car parking area and resurface access road, 2 lights N.C. 2. 127 Market Street instal air conditioning units in upper floor flat N.C. 3. 9 The Links install satellite dish (not visible from the road) N.C. 4. West Port Court. No. 13 6-person HMO N.C. 5. 89 Tom Morris Drive change of use to Class 1 retail, hot food takeaway N.C. 6. 265 Lamond Drive dormer extension N.C. 7. 3 Muir Gardens extension to first floor and rear N.C. 8. 1 John Coupar Court 3 person HMO N.C. 9. 43 Kinnessburn Road 3 person HMO N.C. 10. 16a Greyfriars Gardens 5 person HMO N.C.
Ian Goudie noted that he was now working on finalising an integrated response to this. A draft was distributed at the meeting, integrating the initial work by Bruce Ryan canvassing community council opinion on the policies outlined in the plan, the response to the strategic development plan and past community council transport submissions. He asked for any further comments from members of the council to be passed to him as soon as possible so that a final document can be agreed at planning committee’s next meeting. He noted that there was a wide range a views within the planning committee which had delayed matters somewhat.
Expanding on some of the points in his submission to the departure hearing he said that the Freedom of Information act had come in particularly useful in trying to understand the Health Board’s arrival at its current position through examination of the documents obtained. He commented on the site appraisal report by the consultants Jones, Laing, Lasalle and the grading system for the three alternative sites they had rated; he felt that the scores awarded under certain headings were contentious.
He also dealt with the matter of Environmental Impact Assessment statements. In the case of the hospital submission the Green Belt Forum’s opinion was that the EIA did not meet modern standards which require EIAs for all the alternative sites – in this case there is only one for the Largo Road site. He explained that formerly EIAs had routinely been written by consultants and submitted by developers to be flagrantly biased in favour of the site applied for. New legislation, pushed at the European level, sought to correct that by requiring level playing field alternative site EIAs, but this did not seem to be much followed by developers or planners as yet. This was a general matter on which he hoped planning committee would be able to discuss a response to government in future. He felt that EIAs are not considered with the level of critical scrutiny they merit. He said that the new approach to EIAs posed a requirement for a considerable change in mindset for planners and development committees; whereas previously it was forbidden for the development committee to consider alternatives or anything other than the material put before them on an application, now it is positively encouraged – even required. There seemed to be little recognition of this fact at the departure hearing.
It is not now clear what the timetable for the hospital will be following the departure hearing, where it became plain that not all the required documents had been supplied to the committee. Before the next stage of formal consideration of the application a fleshed out objection, based on the outline letter circulated last month, must be prepared and submitted by community council. He felt it should also include an analysis of the bias in the EIA, and the rating of the sites on ephemeral issues, already overtaken by events even before outline planning permission has been granted.
The meeting of 27 June had put some thought into this question and sought further input and consideration from community council as a whole. The assumption being made was that Fife Council would recognise the strength of the case for another school in the north Fife area, and that as a result the roll would fall to about 1,000. Also the discussion was held in the light of the news that Fife Council is planning to dispose of the Madras buildings in South Street.
The question with some form of rebuilding at Kilrymont Road, it was thought, was the issue of bussing. This would have to continue, though much reduced by a new school in the north. The effects on surrounding residential streets would in part be alleviated by the turning circle now proposed in the school, but Kilrymont and Scooniehill Roads would still suffer. The other question that was considered was what would happen to the Station Park playing fields on the closure of South Street. Fife Council might, the committee thought, feel bussing from Kilrymont to the park to be impractical and sell the land, almost inevitably to housing development. This fear led the committee to think the unthinkable, putting a new school on the east end of the Station Park site which would have sufficient area for a school and sports fields, with the advantage that residential area of the town would not be inconvenienced by the buses from outwith St Andrews. There is some development in the area already – the Gateway building and the Old Course Hotel so perhaps the idea is not as unthinkable as once it might have been.
Jane Ann Liston passed on some figures for school size which she understood represented Fife Council’s current thinking: optimum size is seen as 900-1400 pupils. For each 100 new houses built 15 new secondary pupils are expected. As far as the site goes, neither she nor Cllr Sangster is on the Children’s Services committee. She understands from colleagues that the recommendation to committee was only that Madras be built on one site; but a group of members managed to change that to specify one site at Kilrymont, pre-empting any discussion of sites’ merits. That is now council policy, but it may yet be found to be impractical and officials would then be obliged to go back to committee and ask for a reconsideration. On Station Park she pointed out that it was not zoned for housing, nor a school, and asked if community council was pressing for it to be included in the Green Belt?
Pete Lindsay was very concerned at the suggestion of any building on Station Park as it is one of the lowest lying areas of St Andrews and very vulnerable to flooding resulting from sea level rise due to global warming. Building anything there would be a very short-term option he thought.
Keith McCartney was opposed to any building at Station Park for aesthetics of the approach to St Andrews. In the case of a school he felt that Kilrymont would better serve the population centre of St Andrews so pupils could walk or cycle to school. At Station Park there would be an increase in bus use from the town itself.
Joe Peterson attacked the planning committee for being the tail wagging the dog. He felt issues of this importance should be originated in the full meeting of community council and delegated if necessary, not come as a recommendation by the four members who attended the committee. He found it unbelievable that a committee that constantly mentioned visual impact and green belt should propose development on Station Park. He backed Keith McCartney’s comments on the Kilrymont location. He also added that he felt that sporting facilities were already lacking in St Andrews, apart from golf and the University facilities, and suggested that Sports Tourism was an essential market to cater for in future, particularly in the off-seasons, which Station Park could serve if it wasn’t used by the school. Saying he did not wish to be political, he accused “Liberal councils” of being generally behind the selling-off of playing fields nation-wide, not other parties. Selling Station Park for housing would be anathema for the town as a whole. Donald Macgregor noted that he had previously seen recent press coverage of suggestions of Station Park as a possible site for a new Madras. The decision over a north Fife school school would clearly strongly influence the options available to any decisions on Madras sites.
Stuart Holdsworth didn’t think there was room for a school and sports field at Station Park. Responding to this Ian Goudie wondered what the full implications on the Fife Council decision over single site Madras at Kilrymont; he pointed out that the Kilrymont site is smaller than Station Park. He fully understood that the planning committee analysis was radical, and he had himself not not expected the conclusion reached. Anyone looking at the question must look at the evidence. He’d prefer to maintain Station Park as it is, if practical, but it was a matter of looking at the least of the possible evils of future development.
Alex Yabrov, Students’ Association President, asked if there was a timescale for the various redevelopments and land disposals spoken of. Cllr Jane Ann Liston thought there was not; it seems that much of this is the matter of preliminary long-term discussions, it takes years to build new schools and there is no firm order set for the various schools proposed across Fife. Keith McCartney drew attention to the Fife Council Estates Strategy which gives outline information on dates for various schools. He thought it would be available somewhere on the Fife Council web site www.fifedirect.org.uk.
Donald Macgregor suggested it would be premature to reach a community council position on this at the moment – there was a need for more information. Pete Lindsay suggested that more information might be sought from the likes of Education Service, Madras School Board, etc.
Elise Methven asked if closure of Langlands Primary School provide room for Madras Kilrymont to expand. Cllr Liston hoped that whatever happened in the primary schools review would be done on education needs not just driven by the Madras College site.
Meeting agreed to invite Education Service, Madras School Board to speak to us in the near future, perhaps along with Canongate School Board next month.
Pete Lindsay to write
Elise Methven reported that she has bands booked, posters printing, an advert in the Citizen, and most important she has offers of help to move the chairs, setting them up for the concerts, and putting them away again. She will be putting names against dates soon; further offers of assistance would not only be appreciated, but are necessary to cover the whole series of concerts. Volunteers are needed to set up before 2pm and clear up at 4pm. Set up time is about half to three-quarters of an hour depending on band size, Pete Lindsay said from previous experience, but needs to be completed a reasonable time before the bands start playing at 2pm.
Cllr Bill Sangster made a practical suggestion: replace the current rigid though stackable chairs with folding models which would be easier to store and move. This had general support, depending on cost, but will not affect the immediate needs for assistance.
Letter to Citizen calling for volunteers.
Pete Lindsay
Ken Crichton and Donald Macgregor were willing to help with various of the rôles, but were unable to take on full responsibility.
[Some more representations on the Nicklaus Affair were circulated during the meeting.]
Pete Lindsay went over his outline proposals, but noted he wasn’t entirely happy with all the aspects himself, particularly on voting. He hoped that these would stimulate further ideas. He suggested that it would be better not to rush into a decision, but to consider any proposals carefully looking particularly for possible flaws or adverse consequences, perhaps coming to a conclusion in several months time.
Bruce Ryan would be unhappy with any system resulting in an award being made by fewer than half the voting members. Joe Peterson was quite in favour of Murdo Macdonald’s suggestions last month, now he’d had time to digest them, but suggested adding a requirement that awards be made only once a year at a specified meeting. This was supported by Elise Methven as she’d felt there had not been enough time to consider the recent proposal. She’d like a written proposal one month and a vote the next to give time for consideration. Pete Lindsay was concerned that a fixed time for proposals would lead to an annual award. Bruce Ryan suggested that abstentions be done away with by a compulsory ballot. Chris Lesurf suggested voting be conducted over several meetings as necessary. Pete Lindsay was unenthusiastic as this would be administratively complex and might well lead to the problems of the administrator knowing how people voted and coming under pressure to reveal this. Carole Tricker asked how people who wanted to vote at a fixed date meeting, but were unable to attend, could vote. Joe Peterson suggested a formal ballot paper in a sealed envelope. Donald Macgregor questioned whether a simple written statement without discussion was a sufficient basis on which to vote in an informed manner. Ian Goudie backed Pete Lindsay’s call for further deliberation on the merits of the various suggestions made; obviously there wasn’t immediate consensus.
Ian Goudie proposed the matter be remitted to the General Purposes committee to report back in due course. This was seconded by Joe Peterson. None against. (Any further suggestions to Pete Lindsay).
General Purposes to consider
Due to various people's July commitments the GP meeting won’t be until August; date to be fixed after the August meeting; as usual interested members are invited as well as the formal GP committee (office bearers and chairs of various major committees).
Joe Peterson
Pete Lindsay pointed out here were the best part of 10 days for someone to put in a submission on behalf of St Andrew; all the details of categories were on the relevant web site.
[June 7.7] Joe Peterson was quite upset that no one from community council had been available to represent St Andrews. This trophy had originally been competed for between Edinburgh City and St Andrews Town Councils, to the latter of which the community council could be seen as successor. He suggested that community council ask Murdo Macdonald if he would be prepared to take part on behalf of St Andrew, in recognition of his service to St Andrews and community council over the years. Murdo Macdonald, from the public gallery, declined, feeling it was more appropriate for community council members.
After some further discussion it was noted that there were actually golfers with recognised golf handicaps on community council, but none available for the date of the Gumley Trophy this year. Next year will be another matter.
Joe Peterson said there are questions of ownership and practicality of moving the stone from its current location in the pub garden at the corner of City Rd and St Mary’s Place to somewhere more public, such as the Victory Memorial Hall garden. There was speculation that the stone was the oldest cultural artefact in St Andrews, possibly used as a Pictish coronation stone. [Colin McAllister spoke on the Blue Stane February 2002 3.1]. He asked for community council backing to pursue marking, and perhaps even moving, the Blue Stane.
Jane Ann Liston said that geologically speaking it was a glacial erratic, i.e. a stone that did not match local types, moved from its original location by glaciers during the ice ages tens of thousands of years ago. Its anomalous appearance might well have led primitive peoples to have seen it as magical and suitable for crowning kings upon. She said that there was money in Fife Council to mark and explain it with a plaque, but moving it was a different order of magnitude; not only were there questions of ownership, but as Joe Peterson had said earlier no one sure how much of the stone was buried – it might be much larger than immediately appeared – historical records of its last relocation, during the building of the railway, from its original site on Doubledykes Road were not clear on that point. Fife Council, in the form of Locality Manager Kate Hughes, had been trying to reach agreement with the pub owners to mount a plaque, but every time she was getting somewhere, it seemed, the owners were taken over by another company and she had to start again.
Joe Peterson to contact Kate Hughes to find how the matter stands.
Joe Peterson
Penny Uprichard asked about the constraints on community council members announcing themselves as such when writing to the press. Pete Lindsay replied that provided no one misrepresented their views as those of community council as a whole then he could see no problem with people writing to the press as a community councillor. He understood that there had been some sort of problem before he’d joined community council.
Richard Douglas asked how many comments were received through the community council post-box in the local office? The answer was none lately as no one knew to check it nor where the key was. Donald Macgregor to investigate.
Donald Macgregor asked if producing a regular-ish newsletter again would be a good idea to encourage contact from the public and inform them of issues under discussion? He said this would be as well as the maintaining the current column in St Andrews in Focus as they addressed different aspects of community council’s function, and supporting SAiF had been agreed to be a good idea. Several people indicated they would write for a newsletter. Ian Goudie warned, as a professional statistician, against depending too much on feedback from a newsletter – those who disagreed strongly with something said were always more likely to respond than those with more moderate or sympathetic opinions. There were some discussions about distribution and publishing but these were felt to be premature before something was written. It was suggested that a bland, agreeable to all parties, uncontroversial newsletter might not be the best way to stir interest. The question of who would take on responsibility for running the newsletter operation was left open for the August meeting.
August agenda
Pete Lindsay added a suggestion, independent of the newsletter, that community council make a point of writing to the local press letter columns on some issue each month to stir debate/inform.
Pete Lindsay to order
Discussed asking why no award ceremony in St Andrews or the other award beach locations, rather than a centralised function; should community council organise something; and who should be invited – suggestions included local workers from Community Services, Scottish Water and others to be identified; why the awards are made in early July rather than during the school term for instance when representatives of the pupils could be involved as a part-educational function, rather than just a ‘jolly’ and finger buffet. Agreed to raise the suggestion local ceremony for next year’s awards with Fife Council.
Pete Lindsay to write
Cllr Sangster said that Transportation Service would raise the problems with the contractors; if they did not repair the damage then Transportation Service would do so and bill them appropriately.
Ian Goudie was pleased that Transportation Service had apparently got the message that surveys had to conducted at peak times, but had concerns that while the time chosen was likely to be a peak for traffic in St Andrews during the university graduation ceremonies, it was not at all typical of the peculiar aspect of St Andrews traffic patterns with the hourly surges of students moving between lectures.
Some were worried about the use of the data for comparisons as previous years’ surveys were taken in August; and it was claimed that these peak readings would be used as averages and provide an excuse to “close everything down”. Joe Peterson noted that the coverage by surveyors was the most extensive he’d ever seen, throughout the town not just in the centre. He felt it would be better to wait for the results rather than scoff on principle.
Bruce Ryan reported that it was permissible for community council to buy land such as this provided it can satisfy Fife Council (i) it has the money; (ii) can make suitable arrangements to maintain the land. Trustees would be office bearers of the community council (as set out briefly in the Scheme for Community Councils). The Greenspace web site had extensive information on funding sources.
Cllr Bill Sangster suggested community council should put in a bid; he knew the asking price but did not believe offers would be anywhere near that. He reported that Transportation Service might well be able to include development of the garden (seating, paths, etc) as part of the St Mary’s Place refurbishment with Scottish Enterprise funding, IF the ground was in community council’s possession.
[He added a historical note that it was offered to the Town Council many years ago by an incoming owner of 1 Greyfriars Garden, but they refused it, since when it has slowly gone down hill.]
On an informal show of hands (13 for, 0 against, 1 abstained) it was agreed to investigate making a bid based on the unbuilt land value set by the District Valuer.
(Suspension of standing orders agreed in order to continue business past 9.30pm).
Donald Macgregor reported that he has had various meetings with Mr Inch, the solicitor, on progressing some necessary reforms of the Trust. Bob Inch's view is that changing to Chair, Secretary, Treasurer as the trustees would not need a change to the existing deeds and that the trust would exist as an independent entity even if community council itself vanished in some future wave of local government reforms.
Donald Macgregor drew the meeting’s attention to recent fund-raising efforts by Joe Peterson, raising money in a sponsored swim; he also noted Joe’s son Ryan was competing in the Special Olympics in Glasgow recently, also swimming. He congratulated them both, backed by a round of applause from the meeting.
Meeting agreed for this to be paid out to Madras and closed as suggested.
Richard Douglas suggested that this money should be returned whence it came – the 200 Club. Joe Person suggested it should be made available to a renewed Youth Committee. Pete Lindsay, backed by Ken Crichton, suggested that it either be returned to the 200 Club or added to the Arlington money which was also for youth use; if the Youth Committee did reform and need money for some purpose funds would be made available from community council then.
Meeting agreed to return the money to the 200 Club.
August: Canongate School Board on the review; contact Education Service
September: ask Madras school board.
A CC-owned web site & domain name (approx £30 pa), agreed.
Pete Lindsay
Papers found, registration updated.
Formal presentation to Library Service at noon, Sat 16 July. Ted Brocklebank MSP to be invited.
Beautiful Scotland in Bloom: judges will be in town 2pm Tue 5th July. Joe Peterson hoped the town would be in peak condition, the repair work at the town sign on the A91 complete, etc.
Bill Sangster reported as Chair for the PF that they had part funded the repairs and redecoration of the South Street entrance to Loudens Close and cleaning and re-pointing of the Market Street Whyte-Melville Fountain.
Ian Goudie reminded the meeting that any member was welcome to come along to planning meetings; in the near future matters of the response to the Area Transport Plan and the formal letter on the Hospital proposals would be dealt with. He asked that people take the opportunity to come and add their views in the planning meetings rather than attacking the committee in full council meetings.