BERTHA PARK

When Bertha Park was granted planning permission in 2016, the documents spoke of a "sustainable urban extension" — the language of planning policy, measured and careful. What emerged was something else entirely. Five years after the first residents moved in, the village has developed an identity that no masterplan could have specified: fiercely local, proudly Scottish, and organised with a diligence that would put many established communities to shame.

The residents group, founded informally at a kitchen table gathering in the winter of 2020, now coordinates more than forty volunteers across twelve standing committees. There is a group for the garden spaces, a group for the library, a group for events, a group for the pathways. Each operates with a degree of independence, and each feeds into the quarterly residents meeting where the larger questions are decided.

"We didn't plan to be this organised," says Fiona McAllister, who has served as chair since the group's formal registration as a Scottish Charity in 2021. "It just became clear, quite early on, that if we wanted things to be a certain way, we had to make them that way ourselves. And that turns out to be energising rather than exhausting."

The community's relationship with the built environment is one of its more interesting characteristics. Unlike many new developments, where residents arrive to find their surroundings largely fixed, Bertha Park has seen substantial resident-led change to its public spaces. The wildflower meadow along the Almond path was proposed, designed, and planted by a committee of local volunteers. The community orchard, which will bear its first serious crop this autumn, was funded by a combination of resident donations and a Perthshire Community Fund grant secured by the treasurer.

Perth and Kinross Council has noticed. "What they have achieved at Bertha Park is genuinely unusual," said one senior planning officer, speaking informally. "Most new communities take a decade to develop this kind of social infrastructure. They've done it in five years, and they've done it without waiting to be led."

The question, as the development continues to grow toward its eventual target of 3,000 homes, is whether that spirit can scale. The founding generation has established norms and expectations. The challenge is passing them on.

"Every new neighbour is also an opportunity," says David Rankine, the group's secretary, with the measured optimism of a man who has spent three years welcoming people to the village. "We give every new household a printed welcome pack and an invitation to the next monthly event. Not everyone comes. But enough do."