Fife Council has been warned against squashing the dreams of a club for children and adults with physical and learning disabilities.
It will consider advice to reject the proposed purchase of Rosyth Resource Centre by the Hyperclub, which aims to expand to a seven-day operation.
The building is earmarked by the council for conversion into a children’s nursery instead.
Officers said the club had failed to demonstrate sufficient benefit of its bid.
Urging local people to lobby for the Hyperclub, councillor Dave Dempsey said: “Surely Fife Council should be helping them go forward, not squashing their ambitions.”
The Hyperclub, which started in 2012 for children with ADHD, applied to buy the Granville Way centre for £4,000 under community empowerment legislation.
At its current premises at Ballast Bank, Inverkeithing, it is limited to three days and is unable to provide all the activities it would like for children and adults.
The building it has set its sights on forms part of the council’s Fife-wide nursery expansion plans.
A report to be presented to the assets, property and facilities committee on Thursday recommends that the application be turned down due to the nursery refurbishment plan and an assessment that the club failed to demonstrate sufficient benefit to justify the transfer.
Although councils must agree to community asset transfers unless there are reasonable grounds for refusal, the report said the benefits would be outweighed by the loss of around £146,000 of selling the premises at less than market value.
Mr Dempsey, Conservative member for Inverkeithing and Dalgety Bay and a trustee of the Hyperclub, said: “Fife Council is risking missing a golden opportunity to help some of the most deserving members of [the] community.”
He described Hyperclub volunteers as some of the “most dedicated” around and added: “They could do much, much more but they’re constrained by the building they’re in.”
The resource centre was an elderly day care centre until 2017 and Mr Dempsey said: “For the the Hyperclub, it’s everything that the Ballast Bank isn’t.”
He argued a nursery could be built next to a local primary school.
The committee report states that a move to Rosyth Resource Centre would allow the Hyperclub to widen its services.
But it concluded there was insufficient evidence of how the proposal would be funded and of skills and experience in managing and maintaining such a building.
It also said the proposal did not represent value for money and the cost of building a nursery elsewhere would impact on the council’s budget.
It concluded: “The likely benefits of the request were considered to be less than the benefits of the council’s alternative proposal.”
