PLANS for billboards which 'threatened to ruin views' for Dunfermline residents have been refused by Fife Council.

Angry occupants on Chalmers Street contacted the Press last month to say that the signs would have a “detrimental” effect on the area by taking up green space.

Now, council planners have decided against the proposal, stating that the impact of the advertising signs would not comply with several policies.

The reasons given for the decision included visual amenity and road safety. Planners said that the size, location and appearance of the proposed billboards "would have a significant detrimental impact on the visual amenity of the surrounding area and would create a distraction to passing motorists to the detriment of road safety".

Jenni Cleland, 74, gained 50 signatures after launching a petition demanding the authority scrap the plans.

“It is good news for me and was worth the effort,” she said, after hearing the plans had been refused. “I personally handed the petition in to the council.”

She lives in Spencer House, sheltered accommodation at Canon Lynch Court, and feared that the boards, which would have been set on a two-metre-high fence and spanned six feet by three feet, would ruin the view from her window.

Businesses on the street also raised concerns, with Craig McIvor, financial director at Dunfermline Business Services, worrying that decreased visibility would lead to increased anti-social behaviour.

They've already had enough of that with the owners of Chalmers Street restaurant Jack ‘O’ Bryan’s plagued by vandals over the past year, with damage costing hundreds of pounds to their property, while youths have also stolen bins from the street and set them on fire in Pittencrieff Park.