After four days of debate, a councillor has called for an independent public inquiry into the “disgraceful” collapse of £40 million proposals for a new school in St Andrews.
Independent member Bryan Poole insists the region’s young people deserve answers, saying “the rug has been pulled from under them.”
It had been agreed the school, designed to replace split-site Madras College, would be built on land owned by St Andrews University.
After five years of planning and considerable expenditure, the deal foundered this week.
Mr Poole spoke out after the council released papers suggesting university officials repeatedly changed their minds over the plan’s details before pulling the plug on Monday.
He said this left the council in an “impossible position” and effectively ended the deal.
“I believe there should be a full public inquiry into this matter,” he said. “The council’s timeline makes it pretty clear … where the blame should be laid in respect of the Madras College replacement.
“The behaviour of St Andrews University ‘negotiators’ is frankly disgraceful. The timeline clearly identifies the university changing its mind time and time again after agreements had been reached even submitting a separate and alternative planning application for the site originally agreed for the replacement school.”
Mr Poole accused the university of failing on its commitments, and of effectively misleading the local authority and civil servants later called in to aid the faltering negotiations.
“The university was completely and utterly incompetent when it came to agreeing and thereafter working to deadlines,” he said. “Meanwhile, the timeline further indicates that the university had been less than open with the Scottish Government reaching agreement on how to proceed at one meeting and then changing the goalposts when they left the meeting.”
Ownership of the Madras College building on South Street in St Andrews would have been transferred to the university. However, a bust-up over respective land values killed off the deal.
The university’s eleventh-hour revelation it would only proceed if an independent land valuation came out in its favour has particularly irked Mr Poole.
“Both the council and the university agreed to seek an independent valuation of the land under consideration with the support of the Scottish Government,” he said. “However, within the timeline there is the outrageous statement from St Andrews University that they will only proceed if the valuation, that is the independent valuation, ‘comes out in their favour’.”
Mr Poole suggested the university made the decision to pull out of the deal, in an attempt to get its retaliation in first.
St Andrews University maintains it pulled out of the deal as the ambitious vision had been “irrevocably diluted”. It also claims the proposals had turned into “little more than a land deal for a site disconnected from the town and the university, with minimal sharing of facilities.”