THE Hill of Beath community has committed support to a new group which aims to create an improved playpark in the village and much more.

A public meeting to establish the Hill of Beath Community Group last Tuesday night attracted an excellent turn out of villagers who heard from chairperson Claire McKee that they had already been involved in discussions with the council about the playpark area with encouraging results.

And during the evening there were people who said that they would make efforts to reform the Hill of Beath Community Council, which foundered some years ago.

Claire explained that the whole idea came from a group of mums being frustrated about the state of the playpark off Main Street which suffers from flooding problems.

“We have young families who use the playpark and have seen the problems at first hand so we were determined to get something done to improve the facilities,” she said.

“It has taken time, however, we have been fortunate to have good support from the council officers and we feel that if we can get more people involved in the Group we could be able to tackle a number of local matters.” The council’s Stephen Duffy told the meeting that there were drainage issues in the area surrounding the playpark but it was something that could be tackled.

The Community Group’s chair said that funding would have to be sourced to tackle these but members of the Group had visited a similar facility in Ladybank where fund sources had been utlised to create a top class facility and it was hoped that the information they had received from the visit could help steer them in the right direction.

Mr Duffy added, “It would be possible to create a nice facility with perhaps a wetlands area which could be used by the primary school for teaching purposes, plus create an area which could be used by youngsters and, indeed, people of all age groups.” Claire went on, “We have to take things one stage at a time but if we have involvement from the people of the village the sort of improvements Stephen has mentioned can be achieved.” The three members of Cowdenbeath Area Committee who represent Hill of Beath, were at the meeting to offer their support and councillors Peter Lockhart, Gary Guichan and Alistair Bain were all very supportive of the the Group’s intentions.

The chair said that the Group was small in numbers at the moment but they hoped that more people would join them in the weeks and months ahead and the turn out at the meeting had given them a lot of encouragement.

Claire added, “We have formed a project plan which has a basic framework of the way we hope to proceed and it will involve formally establishing a constitution for the Group.

“The more people we get aboard the better and I would ask people from Hill of Beath who want to get involved to email us on HOBcommunitygroup@outlook.com” The four pronged team are Claire as chairman; Dorothy Smith as secretary; treasurer Laura Watson and committee member Maureen Smith and they hope more will join them.