PLANS for a three-metre wide 'active travel link' between Greenshank Drive and the new £220 million Dunfermline Learning Campus have been submitted.

Fife Council want to provide a new shared path, for pedestrians and cyclists, to the Shepherd Offshore site at Halbeath where two replacement high schools and a Fife College will be built.

The "crucial" travel link along the northern boundary of Duloch Park was one of the conditions when a masterplan for the whole site was approved last May.

At that time, planning permission in principle was given for the campus – with new schools for St Columba's and Woodmill opening in August 2024 – as well as a mixed use development including a nursery, 90-bed care home, 17 assisted living apartments, a pub/restaurant, coffee shop drive-thru, 16-pump petrol station and 225 homes.

The application, submitted by Fife Council's education and children's services, is short on details but drawings show a number of trees to be removed as part of 'site clearance' works.

The active travel link would run between the southern boundary of the new houses – to be built by Bellway and Persimmon – and Calais Woods.

Although it was included as a planning condition, after further discussions with council officers it became clear that a separate planning application was required for the shared path, which must be in place before the schools open.

The agent, Jones Lang LaSalle Ltd, explained: "The principle is established through the planning permission in principle and the proposed development provides a crucial active travel link to the new learning campus."

Recently, the council granted approval for an embankment in roughly the same area, between the proposed housing and Calais Woods, to address differences in ground levels.

There is a 15-metre buffer zone between the site and the trees and the embankment will encroach into that zone, in places by up to seven metres.

The Dunfermline Learning Campus project is being procured and managed for the council by hub East Central Scotland, a public/private partnership organisation delivering new community infrastructure.

While supportive of the new schools and college, as well as the care home, nursery, assisted living and pub/restaurant, the Save the Calais Woods Wildlife group said the plans for more housing on the site, the petrol station and drive-thru coffee shop were ringing "alarm bells".