Green light for Crieff park development

Aug 29 2008 by Andrew Welsh, Perthshire Advertiser Friday

DEVELOPERS hoping to revamp Crieff Highland Games’ traditional home are being made to sweat on a contamination investigation.

Although London-based Kensington and Edinburgh Estates’ long-running bid to transform the Strathearn town’s ancient Market Park was finally approved by Perth and Kinross Council’s development control committee on Wednesday, members also backed a planner’s call for critical ground studies to be carried out.

The decision means no work will be allowed to proceed at either Market Park or the farmland site of the developer’s proposed purpose-built, replacement sports ground until studies prove both plots are pollution-free.

Crieff Highland Gathering director Colin Grassick said the other field along Broich Road was nearly twice the games park’s size, at around 11 acres.

“The new site will give Crieff and the games better facilities,” he insisted.

“There will also be a wider range of uses than Market Park, and it will be used more frequently.”

Mr Grassick said Kensington and Edinburgh Estates’ proposals were “keenly supported” by local football clubs Crieff Juniors, who need their own pitch, and Vale of Earn, who have played at Market Park for generations.

He said training facilities are poor, with the site suffering from vandalism and dog fouling.

“Despite not having a home ground or any facilities of their own, Crieff Juniors have over 150 players and 15 SFA coaches working with them,” said Mr Grassick.

“There is a severe restriction on where they can play and we would like to give them a new home.”

Mr Grassick claimed the new, well-lit sports centre would be safer, and that its facilities would appeal to a wide range of potential users.

Outline permission for both schemes was granted by the Scottish Government in October 2006, after the firm had appealed councillors’ earlier consent refusals.

Residents’ campaign group Pro-Market Park also failed in an attempted community buy-out of the 3.1-hectare site, which is being earmarked for a supermarket and non-food store at its eastern section.

The sports park will include two football pitches, a grandstand, storage and car parking at a 3.65-hectare site beside Broich Road and Pittenzie Road junction at Crieff’s south-east corner.

However, Crieff resident Jean Ann Scott Miller took issue with Kensington and Edinburgh Estates’ spokesman Neil Martin, who told councillors the firm’s supermarket partners Sainsbury’s had presented “thorough” details to locals before submitting a revised planning application in late May.

Mrs Miller described the twin sites as “entirely inappropriate” on road safety grounds, and claimed it was contrary to the games’ long term interests to move them away from the town centre.

Recommending approval of both schemes on the condition that contamination studies prove satisfactory, the council’s development quality manager Nick Brian said the sports ground would “more than replace the existing facilities and provide Crieff with a greater scope for hosting events of all natures.”

Perth MSP Roseanna Cunningham yesterday welcomed the latest twist in the saga.

“This decision will not please everybody in Crieff but there is at least now a degree of certainty as to the direction in which we are headed,” she said.

“The matter is not entirely resolved, but Crieff can start looking forward as a community and make the new situation the best it can be.”