£900,000 vital repairs for busy A-road in Fife soaks up chunk of budget

Councillors around Fife are reviewing their area roads programme’s for 2024-25 and earmarking the worst roads in each region for work.

In the south and west, two sections of the A907 have made the list for more than £900,000 of repairs. The section between Bogside Gateway and Gallows Loan, and the road between Comrie and Blairhall are both earmarked for resurfacing this spring.

Cumulatively, the projects will eat up more than two thirds of the South and West Fife roads budget, which some councillors had an issue with.

“We’ve got two thirds of our Category 1 budget assigned to one road,” Councillor Dave Dempsey (Conservative for Inverkeithing and Dalgety Bay) argued. “It’s an A-road but it's a road that most of the residents in this area would quite frankly be pushed to find on a map. It’s far away and unrelated. It’s difficult to find an argument against resurfacing the A907 but it’s a problem we have in this area.”

However, it was impossible to argue for the road to be removed from the list.

Council officers said. “It will not last another year. It has to go - that’s definite. The scheme is actually starting in April or May.”

Councillor Graeme Downie (Labour for West Fife and coastal villages) added: “I do appreciate that’s a lot of money for the roads in ward one, but from my perspective there’s certainly a safety aspect to it as well.”

He continued: “At least part of the justification for having it done is the number of crashes on that piece of road. There’s actually been quite a lot of cars coming off the road - at least partly as a result of the damage. So it’s actually quite a bad bit of road.”

The A907 repairs, along with the rest of the £1.357 million area roads programme, were agreed at the most recent South and West area committee meeting.