Designs for a Fife attraction’s new visitor centre could be ripped up just days before work was due to begin.
Fife Council admitted the consultation on the £1 million hub for Lochore Meadows Country Park, which has been likened to a prison block, “could have been handled better”.
At the eleventh hour it agreed to seek public input on how the blueprint might be tweaked, but if changes cannot be agreed in just three weeks the planning process could start from scratch.
Planning consent was due to be signed off on Friday allowing the contract to be issued for demolition of the existing outdated centre and construction of its replacement.
However, a public meeting was called by Benarty Community Forum amid criticism of the design and the project’s handling by the council and Fife Coast and Countryside Trust, which manages the park known locally as the Meedies.
There was anger that the replacement proposed would be smaller – although with a larger café – and opinion was divided on the appearance of the modern black-clad structure also compared to a shoe box and chicken shed.
Councillor Mark Hood said there had been a management failure in consultation which was “clearly unacceptable” and added: “We remain positive we will be investing £1.8m in the park facilities and will start the transformation of Lochore Meadows and clear that the community needs to be part of that process.”
Grant Ward, the council’s head of area services, said concerns had been heeded and a mechanism process was in place which would hopefully allow the design to be modified without the need to start again.
He said: “The consultation could have been handled better than it was but we need to move on.
“To say there was no consultation is not the case, there was a lot of information out there in the community and available to people.”
Cowdenbeath MSP Annabelle Ewing had called for the project to be halted until the public was properly consulted and said: “I’m pleased that some progress is being made to ensure that local people get the say they should have had in the first place.”
“People care about their local community and they care about the Meedies.
“They know what an asset it is and want to ensure what is done there now stands the test of time and is the best it can be.”
Benarty Community Forum will work with the council, trust and other groups to revise the design.
Treasurer Lorna Bett said the time frame was tight.
She added: “I am very hopeful we can reach some sort of agreement.
“We won’t be able to please everyone but we will try to get the best we possibly can.
“The public need to feel part of this. After all, many of them are park users and the meadows have always been looked upon as the jewel in the crown of this area.”
Article originally published by The Courier.
Helena Darragh, Research Intern at tCI, writes, “Last week I attended The Consultation Institute’s Understanding Community Engagement training course. It brought my attention to a number of problems that are repeatedly displayed in public consultation, some of which are demonstrated in this article.
Firstly, the council admits that the consultation ‘could have been handled better’. Credit to them for holding their hands up and declaring this, although the cynic in me feels that this indicates an awareness that the consultation could have been carried out with better practice. It seems that as the general public become increasingly conscious of their right to participate in such consultations, those carrying out the process are being held more accountable to do a thorough job.
Secondly, the re-design of a consultation process can then complicate matters. There is the distinct possibility that stakeholders may become discouraged from future participation in a process that they perceive as unacceptable, unfair or, quite simply, time-consuming. Poor consultations can be extremely damaging to stakeholder trust and their future desire to participate in consultation exercises, hindering effective engagement – and this is regardless of whether you’re carrying out the most open and robust public consultation!
Following in this vein, the article states that ‘there was a lot of information out there in the community and available to people’. If so, why has there been so much concern around this consultation? Personally, I believe the problem lies in this word available. Evidently, people are engaged, but given the rise of the technological age, people are generally more interested in expressing their views in bitesize chunks on social media than attending more lengthy, traditional public meetings or focus groups. I am not by any means dismissing the importance and usefulness of these established consultation methods, they do work and often generate fantastic insight. However, reaching people is clearly a struggle. Therefore, was this information available in a place the public visits regularly? Possibly not. As more people rely on their phone for the news rather than their local paper, perhaps more technologically minded public consultation basis would go some way in capturing the interest and insight of the local stakeholder group.”
