IT was good finally to see a response from Cllr Erskine, the Convener of the Cowdenbeath Area Committee, to the worries about the 40-year lease for a St Andrews University boat house at the Meedies which have been widely expressed on social media and within the Benarty community.

However, Cllr Erskine’s words are a fudge of the first order. They completely ignore the key issue of whether councillors, rather than unelected officials, will have the final say over the lease.

Nor do they answer the charge of de facto privatisation. Instead Cllr Erskine introduces a straw man – the charge that St Andrews would have exclusive use of the loch – in order to deny it. But even that denial is based on the boat club’s present use of the loch, and there is no explanation of how that might already be infringing on other loch users and crucially no guarantee that St Andrews’ future use will be restricted, or required to make room for other activities on the water such as fishing, sailing or even rowing by other clubs.

In any case, the University’s use of the boat house compound as well as its boats will be 100% exclusive.

The public is invited to believe that “a public consultation exercise” will be allowed to affect the lease since it is “on hold” until the results are known. What “public consultation exercise”?

Surely Cllr Erskine cannot mean the self-serving and poorly attended exhibition the University put on for an afternoon in Benarty? Why aren’t the results of this already known and public? In any case, who will trust the results as they hardly come from a neutral or disinterested source? And how can there be credible public consultation when both councillors and the wider public have been denied knowledge of the precise terms of the lease (including rental, times of loch use and community payback/participation) on the grounds of commercial confidentiality?

If instead Cllr Erskine means a new full and open consultation by Fife Council, why on earth doesn’t she say so and set out the terms? She might at the same time say explicitly if, as a result of the consultation, the community rejects the proposal, Fife Council will not go ahead. Presumably if she made such a promise in the papers, she would not dare break it as her predecessor as Chair of Cowdenbeath Area Committee did last year when he promised a public meeting a final say about about the Meedies visitor centre.

Finally Cllr Erskine broaches the issue of the involvement of local councillors – they are being kept “informed” and the area committee “would want to be involved in plans as they developed”. “Informed” of what exactly? And the area committee might wish to be involved but it’s all a bit late as plans, including the terms of the lease, have already been fully developed.

On the evidence here, Fife Council, as represented by Cllr Erskine, seems to have learnt nothing from last year’s debacle over the visitors’ centre at the Meedies? . It could hardly be more remote when it comes to dealing with the communities it is supposed to serve.

COUNCILLOR LINDA HOLT,

Dreel House,

Pittenweem.