The plight of a football club, which has been homeless since 2017, has been eased thanks to a motion agreed by Fife Council.
Councillors at a meeting of the South West Area Committee agreed unanimously for a written binding agreement to be drawn up to ensure that Rosyth Football Club will be provided a new pitch.
The club relinquished its Admiralty Park ground four years ago at the request of the council, to make way for construction of a new supermarket.
Since then a planning dispute has left the club without a permanent home and requiring to rent facilities at Fleet Grounds operated by South West Fife Community Sports Partnership.
The club want to develop part of the Fleet Grounds site but have since been informed by the local authority that the council’s preferred option would now to incorporate the club within the proposed new Inverkeithing High School Campus.
However with completion of the new school not expected until 2026, the club say that option is unsustainable.
Now a formal agreement is to be drawn up ensuring no construction work will start on the new store until it’s demonstrated that the club will be provided with a new pitch.
Developer, McTaggart and Mikel, confirmed last week that it is backing the club’s desire to redevelop part of the Fleet Grounds site and will increase, by an as yet undisclosed sum, its previous £175,000 offer, to fund the new facility.
Commenting on the decision, Alastair Mutch, south and west Fife, community manager, said monthly meetings with all parties caught up in the stalemate would continue but warned that “difficult and challenging conversations” would need to take place within Fife Council.
Following members unanimously agreeing to the call for a binding agreement to be created, Councillor Alice McGarry, South West Fife area committee convener, said: “It is a very complex set of circumstances but there is the need for clarity especially for the football club which was displaced from its home without the facilities that were promised.
Councillor Tony Orton, who has continued to campaign on behalf of the football club and who brought the motion before the committee, welcomed the decision to ease what he referred to as the “unreasonable and unfair treatment” suffered by the football club.