More than a dozen of the best-loved parklands in Perth and Kinross are to receive special protected status.
Agreement is set to be reached between the local council and the National Playing Fields Association to designate 15 areas across the county as Queen Elizabeth II Fields.
It means the likes of Perth’s Inches, the Birks of Aberfeldy and MacRosty Park in Crieff will have another layer of legal protection to ensure that they are retained for community use. They could also attract funding for future projects and upkeep.
Local authorities across the UK were asked to nominate public recreation areas as part of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations last summer.
The National Playing Fields Association, operating as Fields in Trust (FIT), set out to protect 2,012 sites. They would be safeguarded for sport, play and outdoor recreation “forever” and any future sale would have to fund direct replacements.
The scheme also provides a degree of certainty for any future investors that the parklands will remain “viable and sustainable.”
The council must now enter into a legal agreement with FIT, including an undertaking not to use the designated land for any purpose other than recreation without express FIT permission. This would last in perpetuity.
Perth and Kinross Council nominated 15 sites, all of which were selected, and the authority was lauded by organisers for being the landowner with the largest acreage dedicated to the scheme.
Although there was no financial benefit attached to the scheme when it was announced, the Riverside Park in Perth has since won funding in the first round of applications.
The £6,500 gained was used to restore the round house and support a planting area for young people.
The sites set to receive the designation are: Riverside Park (encompassing Norie Miller Walk, Rodney Gardens and Bellwood), North Inch, South Inch and Kinnoull Woodland Park, all Perth; the Birks of Aberfeldy and Victoria Park, Aberfeldy; Den of Alyth, Alyth; Western Road Park, Auchterarder; Davie Park, Blairgowrie; Larghan Victory Park, Coupar Angus; MacRosty Park, Crieff; Myre Park, Kinross; Black Spout Wood, Pitlochry.
Because much of the land involved is common good, each area’s common good fund committee yesterday debated the merits of entering the scheme.
Most were agreed with little comment but a decision on whether to include the North Inch and Birks of Aberfeldy was deferred.
Councillor Calum Gillies questioned why the municipal golf course on the North Inch had not been included in the park area.
He said: “If ever, God forbid, that golf course should be privatised or anything, we would have control of that, but if it was included, there would be extra protection. I have doubts whether we can come back to this again in the future if it is left the way it is just now.
“The whole thing, including the golf course, is the North Inch, so they shouldn’t miss a part of it like this it’s just fortunate people can play golf there, but it’s still the North Inch.”
Council officers said the course had been excluded because the scheme was to cover general recreation areas, rather than those for specific uses, but promised to examine the issue again.
Inclusion of the Birks was also deferred as councillors questioned the ongoing planning wrangle regarding a hydroelectric proposal there.