A WEST Fife councillor says he is considering seeking legal advice over a debate on access to Dalgety Bay's Recycling Centre.

David Barratt has been attempting to push for a u-turn on plans by Fife Resource Solutions (FRS), the organisation that manages recycling centres on behalf of Fife Council, to move to a new online booking system.

FRS says the decision is due to “increasing demand and congestion at the site causing safety risks to the public and site staff” however both Cllr Barratt and Cllr Dave Dempsey asked for alternative solutions to be looked at.

The booking system came into place at the site on Ridge Way on July 29. There have been reports of drivers without a booking have to reverse out again into the busy road.

Cllr Barratt said he was allowed to raise the issue at the council's cabinet committee last week but only after making an amendment which did not mention the operation of the recycling centre.

"I sought to amend my own motion, setting out why I believed it to be competent and challenged the council leader to allow committee to vote on it," he explained.

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"My amendment requested the preparation of a business plan to explore delivery of alternatives to a booking system and pedestrian access to recycling centres.

"The council leader deemed this to be incompetent on the basis that I had not identified how preparation of this business plan would be resourced.

"In response to this, I amended my amendment to ask that resources were identified to resource the preparation of a business plan. I was advised that this was not competent as I had not identified how that task would be resourced either!

"I’m not entirely sure if the council leader appreciated how ridiculous this was becoming as he then suggested I was overcomplicating the matter!

"Ultimately, my original motion was passed unanimously and so rather than just allow access to recycling centres to be scrutinised, the council will now undertake a significant review of multiple council-owned organisations.

"I am considering seeking external legal advice on how the council is managing this."

At Thursday's meeting, council leader David Ross told him: "I think if you’re adding things on or requesting specific trusts to do specific things, or asking the council to do specific things in regards to the trusts, I don’t think that’s competent at this point in time.

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“Which doesn’t mean to say in any shape or form we’re not going to address the issues you’ve identified.”

Instead, Cllr Ross invited local councillors to attend a private meeting with council leaders and FRS bosses to “thrash out” the issues.

Cllr Barratt agreed to attend but had an issue with holding the discussions behind closed doors.

“In terms of a private meeting to thrash out these issues, fine, but that’s excluding public scrutiny – and there’s a lot of public interest in this. To say it’ll be dealt with in private is not right,” he said.

“It should come back to committee.”

Cllr Brian Goodall was against the amendment.

“For me this is just ridiculous,” he said. “A particular local issue over a particular recycling centre has become a review of the relationship with all ALEOs (arms length external organisations). We shouldn’t be where we are today. My feeling about the amendment is that this has become an all ALEO issue when it’s not and it never was.”

Cllr Barratt later said: "The biggest question raised by all this is, who runs Fife Council?

"It's meant to be a members-led council with councillors directing policy on behalf of their communities. It's not felt like that in recent weeks."