St Mary’s Monastery land sell-off

Mar 1 2011 by Kate Deuchars, Perthshire Advertiser Tuesday

Dear Editor, – We have been grateful for the opportunity to publicise in these pages a threatened development next to St Mary’s Monastery on Kinnoull Hill that many people might otherwise have been unaware of. We have sought to explain some of the issues raised, and have purposely avoided personal attacks on those who take a different view, a courtesy that has not always been reciprocated.

It is bad that developments like this are able to sneak under the radar, unnoticed by many people until it is too late. We have debated the issue in your pages, but it is unusual to have this level of publicity. The planning system informs immediate neighbours and the statutory consultees, but beyond that there is only an easily missed listing in your pages and a miserable, shrivelled piece of paper upside down on a fence post somewhere near the site. A major proposed development like this should carry a large hoarding advertising the application so that anyone can learn about and comment on it.

Meanwhile, some of the monastery’s supporters have expressed intolerance of any differing view, accusing their opponents of “misusing the planning system”, “Nimbyism” and so on. Can the arguments for and against an application not be put without this kind of mud-slinging? If those who live, work or spend their leisure time in a particular place are not to speak up for it, who is?

The North Inch golfers are not the owners of their course, but they value it and vigorously protect it, and we trust that your correspondent Dr Urquhart (Letters, February 18) would not suggest that they are unhinged in doing so.

In our comments we have put forward several reasons why this proposed development is inappropriate for such a sensitive location, but our over-riding concern would be that long established policies for the protection of valued landscapes and buildings may be jettisoned for the sake of one applicant’s financial need.

Malcolm and Sophie Younger,

Hatton Road,

Perth.