NEARLY 400 new nursery places are set to be created in Central Fife after Fife Council unveiled its model on how it will deliver additional early learning and childcare hours and many of them are coming to this area.

With youngsters set to get 1,140 hours instead of the current 600 hours by August 2020, the area looks likely to get three new nursery centres while refurbishments and extensions are also planned at existing facilities.

The proposals would see the trio of new facilities being created at the Hill of Beath Community Centre, Lochgelly North and Foulford Primary schools while there will be extensions at both Clentry in Kelty and Ballingry's Dunmore nurseries.

A further 16 places would be available through major refurbishment at Cardenden Primary while 60 spaces have been earmarked for a two phased proposal at Cowdenbeath Leisure Centre where an existing creche could be turned into a nursery centre.

All these measures, it is forecast, will create a total of 386 new nursery places.

Members of Fife Council’s education and children’s services committee received an update on the proposals at their meeting on Tuesday.

Head of education and children’s services, Shelagh Mclean, said: “A number of innovative settings will be developed as part of the programme to deliver additional capacity.

“Fife Sports and Leisure Trust have identified additional capacity available in three of their leisure centres, namely Cowdenbeath, Duloch and Carnegie. These spaces were previously used to deliver crèche services for the Trust. We are planning to develop these to offer funded Early Learning and Childcare (ELC) instead.

“Work will be required to upgrade these facilities to meet current Care Inspectorate regulations but we hope that all these settings will be available to deliver funded ELC by August 2019.”

The new childcare provision will equate to 30 hours per week based on a school term, however, the proposed model offers several flexible choices for parents including full-year provision and the option of partner provision delivered by either private nurseries, playgroups or childminders.

In order to cater for all the new places, efforts are already ongoing to train and recruit enough early years staff to work in the centres with Fife College increasing the number of places on its HNC childhood practice courses and Fife Council increasing its Early Years Officer Apprenticeship programme.