8. Torry Residents made aware & Initial Reaction
Although the consultation period for the PLDP had opened on 10th May, the local residents of Torry were first aware that St. Fittick’s park was threatened with industrial development on 10th June, when the statutory neighbourhood notification notices were delivered to residents living a pre-allocated short distance surrounding the park.
The vast majority of Aberdeen citizens would not have been following the PLDP’s progress and are likely to be unaware even of its existence. Given people of Torry’s strong community spirit, the news spread fast and was greeted with shock, dismay and anger. After all the public consultation over the DCMP 2016/2017 and the measures that arose from it, people had thought that the Park would not only stay the way it was, but be improved. Not only that, but there was a widespread feeling that yet another industrial project was to be dumped on the area. There was grief too, at the prospect of losing what remained of their last green space. Valued at the time, but now more than a year after the start of the Covid 19 pandemic even more valued as it has become clear just how much green space benefits people, wherever they live, in terms of their physical and mental health.
It wasn’t long before the “Hand off Our Green Spaces in Torry” facebook page was set up as a local communication network, and to act as a nucleus of a campaign to bring the community together and using everyone’s skills to let the council know it did not want to lose any more of its already limited amount of green land and that it was not an industrial playground. One aspect of the campaign is informing people in articles like the ones Torry Vision and Open Source in the Articles section of this website, and with the photographs of the Park and the beautiful wetlands of the East Tullos burn in the photos section.
Two other important parts of the campaign were to publicise the threat, particularly as the usual public meetings could not take place due to the Covid19 prohibition of them and of the opening of libraries where the Plan would have been displayed and, to encourage people to object to the inclusion of OP 56 and 61 (St. Fittick's Park and Doonies Farm) in the PLDP before the 31st August 2020 deadline. It provided a list of points people could base their objections on, and pointed out how important it was to send one in, however small it was. Together they all would cover everything.
