Stonehaven Recreation Grounds Update
Over the last few years there has been a considerable degree of interest in the land that the recreation grounds occupy. This interest has come from other local groups outside of the Trustees who run the grounds and the Trustees (who are all unpaid volunteers) have purposely not commented on these ideas. What is perhaps not common knowledge is that the Trustees are bound by the restrictions within the Trust deeds for the grounds which stipulate that the land must be used for recreational purposes.
Recently, there has been a significant development due to the Long Lease (Scotland) Act. This act came into force in November 2015 and meant that the title to the recreation grounds land passed to the Trustees of the grounds. This act does not change the bounds of the Trust nor the requirements placed upon the Trustees to use the grounds for recreational purposes.
However, having this land now opens opportunities for the Trustees to develop greater and more varied recreational facilities. It has been sad that Stonehaven has suffered a loss of facilities over the years, such as the squash courts at the old County Hotel. With this in mind, the Trustees are seeking the opinions of the Stonehaven community on what recreational facilities they would like to see at the recreation grounds and we have developed a short online survey to gather your views. We should stress that this survey is only the first small step in examining what the community would ideally like to see and would use at the grounds and how much redevelopment of the site would be needed to fulfil this requirement.
After this initial data gathering exercise we will happily share the results and if and when any draft plans are to be put forward, then the Trustees will engage with feedback sessions and input from the wider community. We would greatly appreciate your thoughts and our survey can be found via a link on our Facebook page or directly at https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/SRG-future
Thanks for your time and input and we look forward to receiving your comments! Hopefully we can use this as a starting point for delivering improved recreational facilities for Stonehaven.
K&M Communities 