Pattiesmuir is a hamlet of some 25 dwellings, built in a cul-de-sac. Its history is long. In particular, the one ‘public’ building, known as ‘The College’, was the meeting place of the ‘College of Weavers’ with its association with Andrew Carnegie’s family. The hamlet has also been influenced by the Elgin family of Broomhall, who, historically held the feu of most properties, and who still own some of the land in which it is set.

In the 50s and 60s, a number of single story dwellings of unremarkable design were built along an unmade road extending from the traditional village street. The surrounding land continued to be productively farmed.

At the Community Council meeting in August 2006, the Broomhall Estate Factor spoke about building houses in Pattiesmuir and gave an absolute undertaking that no more than four houses would be built.

In 2007, Broomhall Estate lodged an application to build four houses on land which was, at that time, outwith the village envelop. The application was refused on the grounds that there was insufficient visibility for traffic joining the A985, largely due to a high fence and vegetation in the garden of Kilberry Cottage.

In December 2007, Broomhall Estate purchased Kilberry Cottage. (Sadly, it took around 12 years before any of the fence or the trees were removed, despite the ongoing hazard to residents and visitors to the nearby Douglas Bank Cemetery.)

In 2009-10, a new Dunfermline and West Fife Local Plan was drawn up. By some invisible means, the village envelop was redrawn to include within it, three parcels of land. This new envelope slipped seamlessly into the subsequent Fife Plan.

At the Community Council meeting in February 2014, a planning consultant engaged by Broomhall Estate brought outline plans for NINE houses to be built on these same parcels of land, where there had been an earlier undertaking to build no more than four.

In the 16 months that followed, the Community Council minutes record that residents of Pattiesmuir, supported by the Community Council, on eleven separate occasions, requested a meeting with the Estate so that concerns and visions could be shared in a ‘round table’ setting. The Estate never assented to such a meeting.

When an application was finally lodged, in April 2016, it elicited an objection from the Community Council and more than 18 detailed and thoughtful letters of objection from Pattiesmuir residents. There were eight brief letters of support from elsewhere.

In November 2016, an amended application for 8 houses rather than 9 was submitted.

In January 2017, it was withdrawn.

In February 2017, it was resubmitted.

This application elicited almost 30 objections and 7 letters of support.

Over a period of more than three years, dialogue between the Estate and the planners had evidently been ongoing. By dint of the successive submission of a revised application, its subsequent withdrawal and resubmission, the plans had eventually been sufficiently tweaked so that officers had to concede that it was technically competent. There was never any discussion of whether it was the right development or of the impact on existing properties and the community they were part of. And there never was any dialogue with residents.

On the 29^th June 2017, the application came before Fife’s West Area Planning Committee with a recommendation for approval. Many of the committee members were new councillors, and this was their first encounter with Fife’s planning system. Before the meeting, they had an introduction to their responsibilities.  During this induction, it had been emphasised that, if members chose to vote against the planning officer’s recommendation, it was highly likely that the developer would exercise his right to appeal, and that could be very costly. The planning officer emphasised that the application was technically compliant. Members knew the issues of concern to the residents, having been contacted by many of them and having made the site visit. They understood how many legitimate concerns had failed to be addressed by either the developer or the planning department, and were minded to represent the interests of the constituents who had so recently voted them into office. They were clearly uncomfortable at the pressure they were under to approve such an application, just because, after more than three years of negotiation, technical compliance had been achieved and all the boxes were ticked.

In circumstances such as this, where an authority is paralysed by the fear of Developer appeal, it is difficult to see the purpose of a planning committee, or why the anachronism of a Developer Right of Appeal is perpetuated.