CONSTRUCTION OF a second retirement complex in an historic part of St Andrews has been knocked on the head by councillors.
McCarthy and Stone, which is already building apartments for the over-55s in the former St Leonards field in Abbey Walk, has been denied planning permission for 18 more sheltered flats nearby.
The firm wanted to erect two three-storey blocks beside St Nicholas House, but Fife Council’s North-East Fife area committee deemed the development too much for the site.
The two-bedroom flats would have shared services and communal facilities with residents of the first complex.
Plans had been redrafted from a single, crescent-shaped block, previously denied planning permission by both the council and a Scottish Government reporter, who said it would be dominant and over-bearing.
Councillor David MacDiarmid told fellow councillors that the size and scale of what was proposed remained too great for a medieval part of the town.
Describing the development as “affordable housing for millionaires”, he said: “It’s far too much in such a small space of land.
“It would all be squeezed in.”
Both St Andrews Community Council and St Andrews Preservation Trust had objected to the proposal, also claiming that its scale would have been too great.
The flats would have formed part of a major residential development of the site previously occupied by St Leonards School.