A Cupar mum who visited the beach with her husband and young son on Sunday said: "As regular visitors to St Andrews we were quite shocked by the state of the road at the West Sands.

"We hadn't actually driven up there for a while and we discovered it was full of holes which could cause serious damage to vehicles.
"Fife Council has a cheek to charge people for the privilege of parking there!"

Another reader, who regularly cycles on the road was equally angry.
"By early this year, the road was in the worst state I have ever seen it, accentuated by flooding from the frequent rain.

"The first sign that anything at all would be done (before the council had the nerve to start charging money to go on it) was that many of the worst pot-holes were filled with loose fine grey gravel.

"This merely hid the holes and of course just spread out all over the rest of carriageway, making the mess worse.

"Then the council came and marked in yellow perhaps 90 per cent of the areas needing attention. Then they spent some days filling and resurfacing only about 90 per cent of the marked areas.

"There many smaller holes that have had no attention; there are some big holes with remains of the loose gravel; and there are some really bad sections, notably towards the far end, where no attempt has been made to repair a serious mess.

Earlier this year, Fife Council allocated £425,000, its share of a partnership project, to improve the West Sands area. With the axing of Scottish Enterprise (Fife) and reorganisation of Scottish Enterprise (SE), there was concern locally that £600,000 of SE cash said to have been earmarked for the scheme would be lost.

This week a spokesperson from Scottish Enterprise told the Citizen that while it had invested more than £6 million in environmental improvement work in St Andrews in partnership with others over the past six years, the Scottish Government's review of Scottish Enterprise's activities meant there was no money for the proposed West Sands project.

Jim Hooton, Fife Council's Service Manager for parks and countryside, said the estimated cost of repairing the whole road properly was £1.25 million and the council did not have the money for that.

"Work totalling just over £30,000 was carried out from this year's budget allocation, to fill in the worst of the pot-holes," he explained.
"We started at the area nearest the town and worked upwards towards the estuary until the money was spent.

"Towards the end of this month, we will meet with our partners in the project, the R&A and St Andrews Links Trust, to reasses the situation and discuss what can be done with available resources."