Council to monitor after hours anti-social issues at Fife school's playing field

Locals who live close to Auchmuty High School petitioned the Glenrothes Area Committee to discuss the use of the school's astroturf pitch in October amid complaints of disruption to those living nearby.

Today (Wednesday), the committee discussed the issues raised in the petition, including the use of the floodlit fields outside of the permitted public access times of 6:00pm-9:00pm during the week.

Outside of this time, the pitch is unsupervised, and residents have reported issues with balls being kicked over the fence hitting cars and properties and youngsters congregating on the pitch outside of authorised hours.

Fife Council officers have suggested that Auchmuty High's management team works with the local community safety and youth work teams as well as Police Scotland to promote responsible use of the pitch outside of public access hours.

Under such a 'good faith' agreement, children could access the pitch any time so long as they wore appropriate footwear, did not litter and refrained from vandalism.

Robert Gibson, the council's community use team manager for Glenrothes and Kirkcaldy, said: "When the facility is used for community use we don't have most of the problems outwith the parking which we've tried to find some solutions for.

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"This can't be fixed with community use - it needs to be fixed between the council and police.”

"We don't have any resource to be managing facilities outwith the times we've got. We don't even have resource for managing it within the times we've got."

Councillors are set to discuss the use of mobile CCTV units to monitor pitch use with local police officers, and say they will monitor the situation pending further action.

Committee convener Councillor Fiona Grant (SNP, Glenrothes North, Leslie and Markinch) said: "This is people choosing to go into a facility that arguably they shouldn't be in ,and use it in a way they shouldn't.

"That's going to be very difficult to deal with, but we do have a commitment that the council and its partners and will see what is possible to minimise this behaviour.”

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