Help save our land by signing petition
Bid to save Common Good Land
In all the fun years of filling this weekly space in your favourite local paper – I don’t think I’ve ever really asked for much.
Yes, I’ve asked you to support the Ayr and District Flower Show.
I’ve also invited you to sponsor a kidney donor nurse running the London marathon.
And I’ve made several pleas to get behind our unique local theatre, The Gaiety.
Most weeks, I try to make a valid point and hope that you, dear reader, will go away and think about it. But . . . this week is different. This week, I want to make a valid point . . . and ask you to do something about it.
I want you to sign a petition. If you’re a keyboard wizard – it will take you two seconds.
For everyone else – it will take two minutes.
But it could help establish a principle and set a precedent that will protect our town from the unscrupulous for hundreds of years to come.
Yes – that’s how long many parts of our Common Good Land have remained untouched and unscathed by centuries of urban development.
Swathes of dear green places – like Ayr’s Low Green and Old Racecourse - enshrined in a protective law by our great, great, great grandfathers.
But if you want them to still be there for your children, your grandchildren and your grandchildren’s grandchildren - you need to do something. Now.
The story so far is shockingly simple.
Ayrshire Golf Trust wants to build a ‘ Golf Academy’ on two prime holes at Seafield golf course.
The holes to replace them will be gouged into the neighbouring Old Racecourse - consuming several football pitches and public park space.
And the Old Racecourse is Common Good Land.
To date, South Ayrshire Council has ignored a public outcry and fallen over itself to support the Ayrshire Golf Trust’s project. Why?
Well, the Golf Academy has, for years, been the pet project of South Ayrshire Councillor Brian Connolly.
And Councillor Connolly is also chairman of . . . the Ayrshire Golf Trust.
He’s on record as saying that “golf in Ayrshire will die” if his little vanity venture is blocked.
It’s hogwash.
The truth is that a little piece of Ayr’s history will die . . . if it isn’t blocked!
And it won’t stop there. There have already been reports of a “secret plan” to develop part of Ayr’s Low Green - the jewel in the crown of our Common Good land.
SAC are now making plans to take the “change of use” of the Common Good Land to a sheriff for the required approval.
Hopefully, he will look at Lord Drummond Young’s 2003 ruling that “Common Good land is held for the general purposes of the community.
“It is owned by the community and the local authority is regarded in law as simply the manager of the property as representing the community”.
The petition I am inviting you to support – drawn up by Friends of Belleisle and supported by every community council in the area – should leave the sheriff in no doubt what the community think of this outrageous land grab.
To sign the internet petition, click onto the link – http:// chng. it/ 4Pq8c6d7
The truth is that a little piece of Ayr’s history will die ... if it isn’t blocked