Published: Wednesday, 24th March, 2010 4:00pm

Charrette scheme worked well

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I have been following the Lochgelly Charrette initiative with great interest.

It was a unique venture to Fife and it has been good to see the people of all ages in Lochgelly getting involved.

I attended the Lochgelly Institute consultation exercise and one of the public meetings and there seemed plenty of enthusiasm from the public for what was going on.

And may I say that Mr Andres Duany was an excellent ambassador for the whole thing.

At one of the meetings I was at he expertly handled questions from the floor and made it plain that he was not imposing anything on the town.

He was there to listen and find out what the people of the community thought the town needed for the future.

Clearly a week long consultation is going to throw up a lot of information and while some of the ideas may be not feasible many others will be able to be used in the model for the Lochgelly which will be created.

Now this venture has been sponsored by the Scottish Government and it will have cost a fair bit to mount but it has shown that public consultation can work in a big way if properly directed.

Maybe after the success of this Fife, Council might come up with their own system which could give them the chance to find out what people think before they plunge into any major project for an area.

CHARRETTEER, Cowdenbeath.