THE Community Learning Development staff in the Lochgelly area have been praised by local councillor Linda Erskine but the facilities available for them in the town were of concern to her.

The Lochgelly and Cardenden councillor brought the issue up as Cowdenbeath Area Committee had been told that the progress of the CLD in the area under the committee’s remit had been good.

Area CLD Team Leader, Alistair Mutch, told councillors that considerable achievements had been made in the development of action plans for the delivery of community learning withing the Cowdenbeath area.

Mr Mutch detailed such things as the skatepark developments, with over 40 young people involved in the creation of facilities in Ballingry, Kelty, Cardenden and Cowdenbeath; and the Neon Cafe at Broad Street Centre, in the town, which was a result of Cowdenbeath Youth Forum listening to their peers, “The young people identified that they wanted a safe, cafe style environment to go over the weekend, a place where they could chill out, do homework and relax with friends.

“Through financial support from Broad Street Centre manangement committee the cafe was established. The young people who organised the cafe have taken part in a variety of training opportunities as well as undertaking Youth Achievement Awards.” He also mentioned the Formula 24 initiative being run at BRAG in Crosshill. “Part of a national programme it is normallyprovided through mainstream education with the groups having the resources of science, mathematics and technical departments behind them,” said Mr Mutch.

“A group of young people have designed, built and raced the battery powered ‘carts’ and have worked to gain significant sponsorship from the business community with some technical aid from adult volunteers.” The CLD team leader also talked about adult learning programmes focusing on skills for employment with course programmes including food hygiene, first aid, introduction to care work and work experience placements, which all are aimed at broadening employability skills.

Councillor Erskine (above), said that she was extremely impressed with the quality of staff that work in the council’s community learning sector, “They do long hours and offer a lot of important help and advice to people and many of their ventures provide confidence and skills, especially for younger people.

“What concerns me about Lochgelly is the facilities we have in the town are not so good to assist our staff deliver these services.

“We have a lot of young people ready to get involved but there are not the facilities available.” Her Lochgelly and Cardenden colleague, Ian Chisholm, agreed and added, ”The RockGelly initiative at the old St Andrews Church will be a very good facility which will appear in the near future and perhaps this is something we could tap into to improve the level of facilities available in the town.” It was agreed that this sort of facility could be something which would be investigated when it is up and running.