Villagers are fighting proposals for council flats near the centre of Kinghorn which they fear would blight the coastal community.
Around 27 affordable homes could be built on the former site of the Caberfeidh care home on the village’s main road.
An online petition has now been launched in protest against the “overbearing” three-storey building planned and to raise awareness of the Bruce Street scheme.
Colin Clunie, who lives a stone’s throw from the site in Abden Avenue and started the petition, criticised both the scale of the proposed block and the level of consultation with local residents by Kinghorn Community Council.
Despite representatives of Fife Council and builder Campion Homes presenting the plans to the community council at its June meeting, Mr Clunie said many townspeople remained unaware of what was in store for the recently-cleared land.
He said: “It has been a pretty poor performance in terms of raising awareness of something as significant as this proposal right in the heart of the village.
“I have no aversion to something going in there at all but there has been no effective consultation.”
The planning application lodged by Campion Homes on behalf of Fife Council says the full height contemporary windows and galvanised steel windows proposed will help create a visually-stimulating, contemporary facade”.
It also says the project will regenerate an important brownfield site while complementing its immediate surroundings.
However, Mr Clunie argued the design was unsympathetic to surrounding 19th and early 20th Century stone-built buildings, including the recently-restored Kinghorn Town Hall.
He said: “Kinghorn should not be considered as an experiment for such poorly conceived and presented development proposals.
“Lessons must be learned from other poor developments that have blighted Kinghorn’s townscape and heritage previously.
“People don’t want a brownfield site there, they want something nice that can be a good gateway to the village but the current proposal is not that.”
Community council chairman Chris Mitchell said there had been input from members of the public at the June meeting and encouraged people to attend its next meeting on August 21 when it will decide whether to oppose or support the proposal.
He said: “We will listen to the views of the people of Kinghorn and I’m sure we will take their views into account when we formulate our response.
“It’s fair to say that people are glad to see a derelict building demolished and the site brought back into use to serve the needs of the people of Kinghorn.
“I don’t think the community council has strong issues with the use of the land for housing.
“But there are concerns around the design and the scale, whether it is in keeping with the adjoining conservation area and historic buildings and the fact the building would be three storeys high and what that offers in terms of the quality of the streetscape.”
Fife Council is attempting to address the shortage of affordable housing in the region with a commitment to having 2,700 new homes by 2017.
Its project manager Tom Nisbet said: “We are discussing the proposal with Campion but there is no concluded deal and any future decision will be dependent on planning permission being granted.
“Any comments the public wish to make in relation to this planning application can be made online at www.fifedirect.org.uk/planning.”
Picture by George McLuskie