We’ve agreed new dates for the forthcoming year.

Wednesday 2 November 2022

Wednesday 1 February 2023

Wednesday 5 April 2023

Wednesday 7 June 2023

Wednesday 6 September 2023

All held in Springfield Church 7:30-9pm. Meetings are public, just turn up and come in.

Dates for Springfield Community Council meetings

2 Feb 2022

6 Apr 2022

1 June 2022

7 Sep 2022

Meetings at 7:30pm in Church Hall.

These are open public meetings so all are welcome to come.

Objections to 19-02613-East Springfield Farm FULL

From Springfield Community Council

Springfield Community Council has held two public meetings regarding this planning proposal in the last two weeks.

In general, Springfield Community Council and residents who attended meetings have very little confidence that Fife Council planning will do anything but rubber stamp this Fife Council affordable housing project.  Site clearance has already begun even though the application has not even been considered.  There are indications that Springfield residents have already been allocated new houses by Fife Council in the unapproved development !!

Objections

Health and Safety of Neighbouring Residential Properties: Asbestos

Fife Council has already failed to protect the Health and Safety of neighbouring residents.  It was informed by ourselves that an asbestos agricultural building was being demolished without proper controls.  Senior Fife Council officers were provided with photographic evidence showing that the demolition was not being carried out in an acceptable manner, and they have refused to take action to halt the work on site, despite being requested to do so by Fife Councillors.

The site now should be considered as asbestos contaminated, until further independent evaluation.

This now the subject of a Health and Safety Executive investigation.

Outwith Local Plan Boundary

Much of the development lies outside the agreed village boundary in the Local Plan.  Springfield Community Council opposes the deviation that is being proposed.

Lack of mix in proposed development

Springfield Community Council is not against house building in the village.  We are objecting to the lack of mixed types of housing in the proposed development.  A mix of private and social housing would be acceptable.

Residents of Springfield do not want the village to become a dumping ground again for solely social tenants, just because there is a lack of social housing being built in neighbouring villages.  Social tenants are already over-represented in the demographic mix in Springfield.

Start of much larger development

Fife Council’s Affordable Housing in Fife have previously stated that this is the first of three phases that will eventually result in more than 120 houses.  However, there is a lack of transparency in this application regarding future phases and their impact. The layout plan shows two road terminations that could be activated in the future for further development.

We conclude that Fife Council is carrying out the larger project in phases because developments of less than 50 houses do not trigger various planning thresholds.  And that would attract greater scrutiny.

Therefore, this application must be considered as the first phase of a much larger development, with much larger impacts.

Vehicular access including additional traffic past school

The sole vehicular access route passes though the road junction adjacent to the main entrance gate of Springfield Primary School.  Most traffic will pass the school gate.

Plans for the first phase of the project (the subject of this planning application) show approximately 60 car parking spaces, and therefore we assume that approximately an additional 60 cars will be moving past the school entrance on a regular basis.

The Headteacher has not been consulted by the applicant about the impact of this proposal.

Existing parking in approach roads

Crawley Court is already congested in terms of access.  And there have been long standing problems with access for waste collection vehicles.  We do not consider that the access proposal is adequate or realistic.  Residents also have concerns that parking restrictions will be imposed on Crawley Court where there is already a lack of resident’s parking.

Existing lock up garages

The future of the existing lock up garages on Crawley Court is not clear.  These are valued by residents, and there is a waiting list for them.  As part of the proposed development, Springfield Community Council calls on Fife Council to improve this existing garage provision and add further garage provision.

We’ve got a new set of meeting planned for Springfield Community Council

7:30pm-9pm in the Church Hall on

We look forward to seeing you

Chair’s Annual Report April 2017 – Sept 2018

Its been another busy year with plenty of business to fill our 8 regular meetings during this period.  This is what we did:

• Liaise with Community Police officers who come to several meetings a year
• War memorial refurbishment. The paving is complete and now looks really good. Thanks to Springfield Community Trust who managed the project.   We entered discussion with various interested parties about the addition of four missing names on the War memorial. All four were from the village and died in WW2.  It has not resulted in any further names being added to date.
• Traffic and Road Speed in village. We engaged with the Community Police officer about some of the speeding and traffic problems in the village.
• We previously compiled a list of problems and then took these to Fife Council.  We have made good progress this, and most recently Main St has been re-surfaced in part due to our raising the defects with Fife Council. We also took various other road issues to Fife Council including water rising from the manhole on Stratheden Brae.
• We continued to engage with local people via our website at www.springfieldcommunitycouncil.org.uk
• Park Redevelopment. We continued to chase Fife Council about the excessive length of time it was taking to finish the park.   Separately we also asked for remedial works to be carried out to the broken MUGA gate and notice board, which have been addressed. We requested a formal review because of the project’s problems. The review was not independent.  It was carried out by Fife Council Property Services who undertook the design, tendering and supervision for the project.  They reviewed themselves and found little wrong.  There was no detailed financial report, and it did not address other concerns regarding the tendering process, nor the excessive delays.  The park redevelopment continues to be highly unsatisfactory.
• Grit bins. We surveyed the grit bin locations and condition in March 2018, and reported back to Fife Council, noting that they were all in use and some required repair.  Fife Council is reducing grit bins drastically across Fife, but as a result of our work Springfield is to retain all its current grit bins.
• Campion Homes Planning Gain. We continued to engage about how the £34k that was being paid to Fife Council for community benefit was going to be spent.  We understood that there was an opportunity to determine some of the spending.  Accordingly we carried out a community consultation for which we had 50 responses.  That informed us how the community would like to see the community benefit spent.  We created a proposal to Fife Council and presented it with the support of our Councillors.  After some prompting from our Councillors,    we received the following reply:

“….Having reviewed the related legal agreement, the £34 000 commuted sum was secured in order to address a deficiency in the application, namely the lack of open space and play facilities. The commuted sum can therefore only be spent on addressing this deficiency within the development. Colleagues in Parks and Countryside are responsible for identifying and implementing a scheme to remedy the deficiency within the development.

The financial contribution is therefore not a “community benefit payment” and the funds can only be used to address a very specific issue. It is also not possible under the current mechanisms to divert the monies to deliver benefits other than those specified within the legal agreement.

I appreciate that this is not the response the Community Council would have hoped for but I trust the above at least provides a clear explanation as to why this is the case. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you require any further clarification.
Kevin Treadwell
Service Manager
Development Management”

Obviously, we were very disappointed with this response, especially after engaging with the community and raising hopes in the community that might have a say in how this is spent.  Given the ongoing lack of conclusion to the park redevelopment, we continue to have little confidence that the £34k sum will be used effectively for the benefit of the community.

• Defibrillator in phone box. We agreed with Springfield Community Trust to collaborate over a defib in the village.  We purchased the phone box from BT for £1 and then passed ownership to Springfield Community Trust who have raised funds to install a defibrillator.  Many individuals and businesses in the village have contributed to the funds, and local tradesmen have also carried out work gratis to see the project completed.  Thanks to all.
• Pruning of trees. Residents brought various issues regarding pruning of trees and hedges to us.  We engaged with Fife Council to get these sorted out

We would like to welcome more members onto the Community Council, there are several vacant spaces for co-opted members.  If you or someone you know might be interested then please suggest they come along to one of our meetings.
We would also like to welcome more residents to our public meetings.  There tends to be a high attendance if there is a big issue to take action against (such as a housing development) but we have a low attendance otherwise.  We would like to urge resident to come and be involved with community business.
Finally, we would like to thank our Local Councillors who really enable our meetings to have some real outcomes within Fife Council.  We would particularly like to note the high level of input from Cllr Karen Marjoram and Cllr Margaret Kennedy, and thank them for their support.

What’s in the consultation ?

1     What do you want to do in Springfield that you can’t do now?

There is a Community Benefit payment of £34,000 from housing development by Campion. We think that the residents should have a say on how this is spent. TELL US YOUR PRIORITIES.

2     Landline phone – Some residents experience noise and interference on their landline. How is your landline now?

3     Home Broadband – How’s your broadband speed and reliability at your home now?

4     Mobile phone – How’s your mobile phone reception at your home now?

TELL US HOW IT IS – ONLY THEN WE CAN WORK FOR IMPROVEMENTS !

Dear residents of Springfield and Stratheden

Here are the dates for our normal meetings.    We usually see either one or both our Councillors Margaret Kennedy and Karen Marjoram at our meetings.  The Community Police also attend a few times a year.

There may be additional meetings for special issues that come up during the year, and there will be an  AGM.

All on Wednesday, 7:30-9pm Church Hall, Springfield

8th Feb 2017

19th Apr 2017

14th Jun 2017

13th Sep 2017

8th Nov 2017

We look forward to seeing you