A battle against building St Andrews’ new high school on the town’s southern hillside is continuing as Fife Council presses ahead with the formal planning process.
Both opponents and supporters of the Pipeland Road site presented their cases during a meeting of the Royal Burgh of St Andrews Community Council.
The Say No to Pipeland group, led by former Madras College head teacher Lindsay Matheson, insisted that the agricultural land in the town’s green belt was the wrong place to build the replacement for the school’s two campuses.
As it won the support of the community council, it also grasped at confirmation from St Andrews University that land previously considered at the North Haugh remains available for the project.
A university spokesman told the meeting that its North Haugh site known as the pond site was and always had been available for exchange with Madras College’s South Street building but had been ruled out as fundamentally unsuitable.
Urging the council to return for a serious look at the North Haugh option, Mr Matheson said: “We were encouraged to hear there is no doubt that the site is available that to us is a game-changer but the current issue is the planning application.
“That is going to be a hard-fought battle between those desperate for a school whatever the price and those who think there is a much better long-term option.
“There is a very strong emotional pull to get a solution I know that more than anyone, having run the school for 10 years.”
But he added: “Ten years ahead, people will see the mistake made at Pipeland Road if that goes ahead it’s very much a short-term fix.”
The parents group fighting for the school to be built at Pipeland Road insisted it was clear the North Haugh site was unviable.
Parents Voice chairwoman Wendy Donald said: “The university is saying the site is available but they want a swap and, legally, Fife Council can’t do that.”
She also said that a further 300 letters of support for the Pipeland site had been handed into the council on Monday.
Another group member Colin Brown told the community council on Monday: “After countless disappointments, we need to build the school without delay.
“Only one site which is capable of meeting the educational needs for a 21st Century school has been identified and is available for our school.”
The university spokesman said: “The pond site is available, as it always has been, on the basis of a straightforward excambion for South Street.
“This was our original vision and proposal. We are not presently doing anything else with it.
“However and it is a very big however we have explored this option with Fife Council and they have made it very clear that they do not want this site, it is fundamentally not suitable for their needs.
“In fact, they have told us that we could give them the site for nothing and they still would not accept it for the new school. We have to respect that decision.
“It is also important to stress that Fife Council has our full support in its efforts to find a suitable alternative site for the new Madras and it is our hope that the new school can be built as quickly as possible in the very pressing interests of the children of this community.
“I appreciate this is not the perfect answer, it may suit neither side in this debate, but it is the truth.
“I hope you can also see that were it to be simply reported that the pond site is available, it would be a misleading statement and not the whole truth.”