Dalgety Bay: Impasse between Fife Council and Scottish Water

Due to poor maintenance at the privately-owned Longhill Park, when there's prolonged spells of heavy rain the water flows down and into properties on Lade Braes.

The problems have long been known about and there is £50,000 for a solution but work has never started as neither authority can agree a way forward.

Local councillor Dave Dempsey fumed: "We're stuck there with the two groups taking incompatible positions and the only way I can see to sort it out is to get them back together again with councillors and ask them to work out how the heck we solve this problem."

Having blamed the delays previously on Scottish Water being "awkward", he tabled a motion at last week's South and West Fife area committee calling for a swift resolution.

Cllr Dempsey said: "This was first brought to my attention in April 2019, although I gather the problem has existed for much longer than that.

"By July 2019, the council was fully on board, there was a motion to this committee in January 2021 which, because things had stalled a bit, a plan came through in May 2021 and by July of 2021 we had really an impasse."

He said he attended a meeting with council and Scottish Water representatives, then attended an "extensive walkabout" in August 2021 but nothing was done and work never started.

In August of this year he met some "fairly senior people" from the company, raised the issue and hoped progress could be made.

However, Cllr Dempsey said he received an email at the start of this month from Scottish Water that said "at present we are no further forward than we were when we wrote to you in June 2021".

The council set aside funding of £50,000 in March 2021 and Ross Speirs, who was service manager for structural services at the time, had said: “The concerns we’ve had here is that the land is not owned or controlled by Fife Council so we’ve been doing a lot of legal research in the background, hence the reason for delays in getting anything done here.

“We can’t just wander onto someone else’s land and start digging it up and do work on it.

“We’ve been having discussions with Scottish Water so we can look at developing, in the next financial year, a solution here.”

At last week's meeting, Cllr Dempsey told the committee: "In summary, the council have proposed to sort out the drainage and alleviate the issues for the people into whose gardens the water is draining where it shouldn't.

"The council team contend they are merely upgrading the existing system which connects into Scottish Water and can only really connect into Scottish Water as it's not at all clear where else it could go.

"Scottish Water contend this is a new system and under the regulations that now exist they can refuse to accept it."

He said the best way to resolve the issue was to invite both sides to a meeting of the committee. The motion was agreed.