CONTROVERSIAL proposals to lease an area of common good land to the Alhambra Theatre Trust have received the backing of Dunfermline councillors.

Members of the City of Dunfermline area committee had been asked to approve the 25-year lease of the plot on the corner of New Row and Park Avenue.

The proposals will now go to the council's assets and corporate services committee before the ultimate decision will be made by a sheriff at Dunfermline Sheriff Court.

The trust want to use around 16 square metres of the land on the 376 square metres site for improved access to their proposed Ironmongers Studio and would pay £1,000 a year.

Planning permission is in place to convert the old Watt & Dewar premises into a performing arts centre which will have a 200-seat studio theatre, an HQ for the Alhambra stage school and a home for the Dunfermline Cinema Project.

But the trust’s request to lease adjacent common good land – they now want a much smaller piece of it – has proved divisive in the past, with councillors split over the issue when it first came to the City of Dunfermline area committee in March 2018.

The disputed site is currently a formal garden with flower beds, shrubs and benches. It was gifted to the ‘City and Royal Burgh of Dunfermline’ in 1962 by the Carnegie Dunfermline & Hero Fund Trustees with a prohibition on development in order that it be maintained as open space.

At their meeting on Tuesday, councillors agreed to back the plans despite nine objections from organisations and members of the public, including Central Dunfermline Community Council and Dunfermline Regeneration Trust.

Concerns had included no valid business case to substantiate the application; the arts centre being able to go ahead without using common good land; no public benefit; it setting a precedent for the sale of common good assets; and the impact of a commercial development on private residents’ amenity.

Councillor Fay Sinclair said she had "slight concern" about the use of the land changing even if a smaller part was now being lost.

"We had a similar debate a year ago and at that time, I was against the proposal because it was covering a large area," she said. "I am glad to see it back with a reduced size being considered today. That whole area could become primarily an area for people accessing the building and not the quiet resting stop it currently is but, certainly, we don't want to be curtailing progress on the theatre school, which I think everybody supports."

Committee services manager Andrew Ferguson confirmed to councillors that the lease would, if given the go-ahead, be for 25 years.

"We will need the consent of the sheriff in the same way we would need the consent of the sheriff to sell it outright," he said. "There is no question of this converting to an out and out sale. If this was to change at some point in the future, this is something that would have to come back to committee."

A report to councillors from Fife Council's head of assets, transportation and environment, Ken Gourlay, said the area sought was "minimal" and the works limited to a footpath extension.

"It is considered that the lease disposal will have minimal impact on the use or visual amenity of the area," he said. “The disposal will allow the creation of a safer and more amenable access to the building."

At Tuesday's meeting, the committee also gave their support to the sale of another piece of common good land, this time at Park Avenue, to the owner of 19 Park Avenue, who wants to buy the 42 square metres plot for £5,000 with plans for a double garage and a wider driveway.

This proposed sale, which also attracted objections, will now also go to the assets and corporate services committee and ultimately the sheriff court as well.