'Last resort' £26,000 injection to keep Glenrothes garden project afloat

Glenrothes YMCA said it had "exhausted all avenues" for emergency funding after additional construction costs and the impact of Covid threatened to derail its Healthy Living Garden project.

Fife Council had agreed a one-off donation of £18,000 in January 2019 towards the project, which was originally expected to cost £283,000.

However, Mary Goodwin-Wilks, manager of Glenrothes YMCA, said the additional unexpected costs had forced her hand in seeking extra funding of £26,740 from the local authority.

"Since the shortfall funding has been found out we've been to Fife Environmental Trust, Big Lottery, Crisis, Help the Homeless - nobody is funding (these works)," she told the committee.

"Everyone is funding programmes, quite correctly, to do with the recovery from this pandemic. I cannot get this funding anywhere else.

Councillors lambasted the YMCA for what Ms Goodwin-Wilks readily admitted had been "many errors" in carrying out the project, which will see a garden created for those staying at the centre to tend to as well as a publicly accessible play park.

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Cllr Craig Walker (SNP, Glenrothes West and Kinglassie) described it as a "botch-up from start to finish," adding: "It just seems to me there's been errors going through this project and now you're asking the taxpayer for help at the last minute.

"I don't want this to come across as criticism of the project. That's not my intent."

However, Cllr Altany Craik (Scottish Labour, Glenrothes West and Kinglassie) said it would be unfair to expect a charity to be able to prepare for all eventualities in such a large project.

He said: "Am I happy that it's over budget? No.

"But when professional organisations like ours manage to be over budget on so many things or don't take into account things that can go wrong it's a little bit unfair to pick on a charity that may not have the expertise that we have.

"There is learning here ,and to that end I'm willing to support it because I want the project to succeed."

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