05-05-2025
- Business
- The Herald Scotland
Inside the legal battle for Poets' Neuk in St Andrews
It was first gifted to the town by Mary, Queen of Scots before her abdication in 1567, and was once the site of a medieval Greyfriars monastery chapel.
For the best part of two decades a community group has been seeking to acquire the plot and transform it into a poetry garden, complete with a statue of the monarch.
Plans for the poetry garden (Image: Poets' Neuk) Under the Land Reform (Scotland) Act of 2016, community bodies have the power to apply to the Scottish Government to exercise a compulsory purchase order (CPO) on land or a building for sustainable development.
Poets' Neuk applied under the act to buy the land and turn it into a community garden.
Ministers backed the application but landowner Forthtay Ltd, a trust controlled by Isle of Man based Optimus Fiduciaries, lodged an appeal alleging "apparent bias" toward the community group and accusing ministers of acting unlawfully.
This week though, Sheriff Timothy Niven-Smith concluded that ministers had acted lawfully in their decision, paving the way for the sale to go ahead.
Graham Wynd, chair of Poets' Group, tells The Herald: "The garden's been an eyesore for a very long time.
'Originally the St Andrews Preservation Trust campaigned and exhorted the owner of the land to clear it up, the council tried to do the same.
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'Then we decided that the thing to do would be to try and buy the land so we got in touch with the owner and offered well above market rate for the land - still he refused."
In 2018 the group secured a pre-emptive right to buy, but that only forced Optimus Fiduciaries not to sell to any other groups - it was under no obligation to sell at all.
Mr Wynd explains: "We put in a lot of effort, the owner claimed he was already selling the land to someone else, or was on the brink of a sale.
"As soon as you put in an application, that puts a stop on any buying or selling of the land. The owner was claiming to be in a position where he was just about to sell it, and that by applying for a community right to buy we'd put a stop on the sale.
'The way the government deals with that is to go through an accelerated process, which is more stringent. We got to the end of that process and the government awarded us the right to buy.
'The owner, as we soon discovered he was entitled to do, simply refused to deal with us."
With the owners refusing to sell, Poets' Neuk applied under section five of the act for a CPO.
The plot of land in question (Image: Google) In May 2024 it was granted, the first time the power had been used, but Optimus Fiduciaries instantly lodged an appeal at Dundee Sheriff Court.
The grounds for the appeal were based on ministers not having applied the test of there being a 'substantial benefit' to the community, rather than merely a 'benefit'; that they did not consider the benefits of not selling the land; that the CPO was in breach of article 1 protocol 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights which states "every natural or legal person is entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of his possessions"; that the Scottish Government was 'unduly influenced' by the wider implications of a successful compulsory purchase order which it described as "a serious, fatal, failure of impartiality"; and that ministers had not taken regeneration adequately into account given the proposal by the owners to build a café.
The appeals were all rejected.
Mr Wynd said: "We were confident we could meet the requirements, certainly in our opinion, but there was so much scrutiny that you can never be confident.
"I really cannot understand the accusation of bias. We have found the civil servants to be very helpful but scrupulously careful not to exercise bias toward us or the owner – sometimes we felt they were perhaps a little too cool with us!
'The government scrutinised our application and took a year over it, they produced a very long and comprehensive report.
"The next steps are to actually acquire the land. The price has been set by the district valuer, so there's no debate about that.
'We need to get the deeds to the land as the first formal step, we tried a year ago but the owner said that since they'd lodged an appeal they weren't going to hand them over.
'I think they will have no choice now, indeed the terms of the acts say that if the owner does not our recourse is to go to the Scottish Lands Tribunal who would then enforce a handover."
The CPO could pave the way for future takeovers, with land reform one of the thorniest issues in contemporary public life.
Close to 60% of rural land in Scotland is believed to be in private hands, with some estimates stating that 432 families own half of private land in the country as a whole.
Sheriff Niven-Smith was not asked to rule on the merits, or lack thereof, of the proposed poetry garden but whether ministers had acted within the law in granting the CPO.
In rejecting the appeal by Optimus Fiduciaries, the sheriff concluded that they had.
Mr Wynd said: "It's a very satisfying moment for us, because what it represents is that the people of St Andrews can actually have a say in that their town looks like, and that they can prevent someone like the owner from totally neglecting the land and turning it into an eyesore and a location for very unsocial activities.
"I hope other communities can follow suit. It is, however, a lot of hard work - in a sense this is only the end of the beginning.
"The next step is to acquire the land, then to implement the plan we've had for the garden for a very long time.
"We are expecting to receive a substantial grant from the Scottish Land Fund, which as I understand it is really lottery money, we put in an application some time ago and that is still live. If we're successful with that we could get a very substantial proportion of the acquisition cost.
'If that does not come through then I'm glad to say we have generous benefactors who would be prepared to provide a bridging loan.'
