The LA&P competition is now closed and we’re delighted to announce: WE HAVE A WINNER!

Thanks so much for your thoughts and suggestions (and sorry we couldn’t reply to all personally.) But, thanks to some rigorous research from several of our members – at last, the identity of the mysterious company which started off as part of the Craighouse Partnership, that we have had so much trouble getting any information about, can be revealed…

…And just to keep the suspense going a little longer, we will be keeping you on the edge of your seats until later today – so check out the blog later this afternoon to find out more…

3540 signatures!

Well, it is nice to be able to update the website with a new petition number.

After Christmas, our total has smashed through the target of three and a half thousand and we’re now well on the way to the big 4K.

There has been a lot of activity recently, and we will be updating you and putting up new articles in due course. In the meantime, we hope you had a fantastic Christmas and New Year and here is a photo of a rushing deer taken up at Craighouse over Christmas. It is a beautiful spot to watch wildlife, and the site acts as an important wildlife corridor – providing habitats and peace for both the wilder residents and the more local human kind, to get away from it all and enjoy nature.

Look out for more articles soon.

We smashed the 3000 target. Present total is:

3186 signatures!

Wooo-hoooo!

Old Craig in the Snow

And we still have a bunch we are off to collect from people today. Thank you so much to all our volunteers and members. Keep up the good work everyone! Next target is 3500…

A photo of a local resident enjoying the grounds in the late 70s

You may have seen the Evening News article published yesterday.

Ever since the letter from John Bury,  Head of Planning, was sent to local residents, stating that the site had been closed to the public before Napier and that the developers are under “no obligation” to retain free access to the historic beauty spot, the Friends have been receiving emails of protest. Continue reading →

The Friends have uploaded two Financial articles analysing the developers’ financial claims – this one on “Enabling Development” and this one on Maintenance Costs. Please read if you haven’t caught them already. We will house them with other important articles under Key Articles on the menu tab.

Last week we had a visit from the Woodland Trust who came to see for themselves the threat to this beautiful landscape designated of Great Landscape Value. We were particularly honoured when we found out that Alice was Environment Campaigner 2010. Thankfully the weather was very kind and the grounds looked as lovely as always and Alice got to see for herself just how important this site is to people.

The Craighouse campus is highly valued by the local community, providing green space for recreation and a place for wildlife in a busy city. (Alice Farr, The Woodland Trust)

Continue reading →

The developers maintain that they have to build so much new-build to raise the enormous maintenance costs associated with the listed buildings.

There are many problems with this argument and it is disputable whether it is even a valid one to make. But here, we will look at the developers’ maintenance claims in more detail.

Friends of Craighouse issued a Freedom of Information request to obtain Napier University’s maintenance costs for the site.

Over the 7 years from 2005-2011, the maintenance costs for the buildings and the grounds was an average of £131,860.

Continue reading →

Despite some difficulty (well quite a cold and rainy bit of difficulty) with the weather this week, our intrepid volunteers still managed to add another 405 signatures to our petition – bringing us to a grand total of 2448, well on the way to our next target. Thanks so much for all the hard work, everyone – a terrific result!

We gathered a few quotes to let you know what people are saying. So, here are some of the things people said to our volunteers this week:

“thanks for doing all this, it’s great to know that someone is looking after our interests”

“I can’t believe property developers have been allowed to buy a nature reserve”

“I hope you’ve got the politicians involved in this”

And lastly this from a ten-year old boy: “I’ve heard about this and I want to sign the petition. I don’t think they should be building on the orchard.”

I couldn’t agree with him more. So, let’s keep up the good work.  3000 signatures here we come…