Dear Member

It has been brought to our attention that there has been recent comment on Facebook regarding a planning application made jointly between the Sailing Club and Talking Tandems. Members of the public have correctly made comment via the planning process , but the recent comments made on our Facebook Group go against our code of conduct for our Facebook Group use – http://dbscweb.wordpress.com/dbsc/whats-going-on-keeping-up/. The Sailing Club have only twice removed comment from our Facebook Group, once were the comment was advertising food in a local pub and this one – both of which are regarded as anti competitive against the sailing club. We do not suppress any comment, even when they are critical of the sailing club, and all can see past evidence of that being the case, but we do need to make sure people abide by our rules of use as outlined on the website.

Because this is only a partially informed point of view, it is best we explain what the Sailing Club have been progressing in partnership with Talking Tandems. This of course is one of many initiatives under way to develop our Sailing Club.

The Sailing Club do all we can to work with in partnership with other local not for profit groups. We make our facilities available for hire free of charge to these groups and work together for mutual benefit of each organisation. We see this is vital because -

• We place a lot of importance on our profile in the community

• People in these groups may want to try sailing and often do, with some going on to become sailing club members also

• We can tap into funding support over and above what we already build cases for. This is because we become in the eyes of Sport Scotland and Fife Council a Sports / Community Hub

• It can help with our tax discounts, because community involvement is looked on very favourably

So to the project under way with Talking Tandems. For those of you who do not know, Talking Tandems are group of people that allow blind people to go cycling and like the Sailing Club, are a ClubFife accredited organisation. They came to the Sailing Club well over a year ago asking if we could help them with storage facilities for their tandems, because the local company in Dalgety Bay who currently provide storage to them free of charge is moving location. We do not have spare storage, but we knew we had a growing need to get the Top Boat shed made available to store boats, especially after the recent investment in new safety boats. In partnership, a group of sailing club members started working with Talking Tandems to identify possible options and recommended to The Board a joint initiative to lay a concrete slab to build two single car size garages, one for their storage and the other we would use to store the Tuesday Group maintenance equipment, including the sit on lawn mower. Many locations were considered and in the end, the area in amongst the trees / bushes to the east of the dinghy park was selected, because it meant that these new buildings would not be highly visible (please see plan below that was included in planning application, which unfortunately does not show bushes and trees). It appears there is a view that these garages will be in full view of our neighbours and we are being accused of not considering their needs, which is disappointing, as that is far from true and was a key contributing factor for the site chosen.

Why did we not tell members? Well this was never a secret, with non Board members involved with the project, Talking Tandems being in and around the sailing club and any updates being included in Board minutes. However, it was decided that we would wait till after planning permission was obtained before we issued a members communication outlining what we were looking to do, because the project may not get off the ground.

It is hoped this full explanation of what the sailing club are trying to do will help people fully understand and hopefully appreciate we very much took into consideration our neighbours. We could of proposed to build these new garages on land directly adjacent to our neighbours, but that would have been thoughtless.

Access to our Facebook Group is going to be reviewed against current a membership listing, because only people on that listing and known friends of the Sailing Club should be members of this forum…. we often get requests for access from unknown people.