AN APPEAL over Fife Council's "unlawful" decision to refuse planning permission for 140 homes next to the old Wellwood Primary School is on hold.

It's more than four years since Nottinghamshire firm Omnivale Ltd put in proposals to develop 14 acres of land north of Leadside Crescent.

The application was tabled in January 2017 and rejected by the council in October 2019 after the firm said they wouldn't meet the financial demand for transport improvements, which could be more than £550,000.

Omnivale slammed the decision as "unlawful" and "unjustified" and appealed to the Scottish Government in February 2020, however, a final ruling is still awaited.

A hearing was scheduled for July last year, it was then pushed back to October and then December, but due to the pandemic, it's still not taken place and it's not clear when the reporter will make a final ruling.

A spokesperson for the Planning and Environmental Appeals Division told the Press: "This appeal has been put on hold, with the agreement of the council and the appellant, to hopefully allow an in-person hearing to take place when circumstances allow."

The application is for planning permission in principle and the site is to the east of the A823 road, opposite the Rennies bus depot.

The proposals also include access roads, the realignment of a watercourse and creation of open space.

FIFEplan, the council's blueprint for what can be built and where, said the site could accommodate 100 homes but Omnivale believe the capacity is higher.

The main stumbling block, however, has been the firm's insistence that they shouldn't have to pay for transport improvements in the area.

They also don't want to provide land for, or contribute money towards, the £20 million Northern Link Road (NLR).

It's a bypass that will run from Halbeath to Milesmark, serving and running through the new housing estates to the north of Dunfermline and taking traffic away from the town centre.

The council's position is that developers must pay for the required transport improvements on the basis that the homes they're building, and the residents who buy them, will be adding to traffic issues.

Omnivale argue that the increase in traffic from their site would be "negligible" and that having to pay for the NLR too would amount to "double-counting".

The outcome of the appeal is hugely important because, if the firm were to win, other developers may also try to get out of paying contributions for transport infrastructure that the local authority cannot fund on their own.

Last month, the council said the development of Dunfermline over the next 30 years would involve the building of 8,000 new homes and £220 million of transport improvements and infrastructure paid for by developers.