| Members of the Wormit Village Group visited the polling station at Wormit Church East Hall to collect signatures opposing Fife Council’s plans for its further development from voters entering the polls.
Fife Council’s draft plans envisage building hundreds of new homes in Wormit during the local plan period, which extends to 2016 and beyond.
Like residents elsewhere in Fife, many in Wormit are strongly opposed to the plans and believe that the infrastructure of towns and villages such as Wormit, Tayport and St Andrews would be unable to cope with such large scale developments.
Gayl Wall, from Wormit Village Group said they had already managed to collect signatures from more than half of Wormit’s adult population.
“We have been out knocking on doors and have collected around 600 signatures already,” she said.
“We estimate there is a population of 1000 and we expect to get the rest of the people as well. More than 97% of people we’ve spoken to are opposed to the development.”
Once the Wormit Village Group’s petition has been completed they plan to send it to Fife Council’s head of development services Keith Winter.
“I think there has been a lot of disappointment over the plans for Wormit and all of East Fife,” added Gayl.
She also said that everyone in the community was readying themselves for a long fight against the plans.
“After finishing the petition we will have another meeting to decide where we go from here,” she said.
“We are ready to go all the way — hopefully even as far as a public inquiry.”
Gayl added that many people felt that developments on such a large scale would have a long-term detrimental effect on Wormit.
“What we’ve found since the draft plan was published is there is quite a strong sense of community in Wormit and everyone has come together to oppose it.
“I don’t think there would be the same sense of community if these developments go ahead.”
She added that she imagined there would be a sense of unease across the Tay over the planned scale of the developments in North East Fife.
“I wonder how Dundee City Council feels about it all. If the plans go ahead, most of the people will be commuting to Dundee every day.
“They (Dundee City Council) will want to regenerate brownfield sites there and surely it is better for people to be living in Dundee rather than in Wormit,” she added. |
