Parent urges town rally to save St Andrews skatepark

A couple of weeks ago, Fife Council removed the skate ramps in Pipeland Road park, claiming the equipment was “old and unsafe”.

A meeting has now been organised for Wednesday, February 22, at 7.30pm at the Cosmos Centre, and one of the organisers, Iona Potter, a children’s bookseller at Waterstones, says that she has been told by the local authority that if the skate park is to be replaced, the cost must be fundraised.

She is asking St Andreans to take a pro-active approach to help replace the skate park, which would cost an estimated £250,000 to replace.

Iona told the Citizen it was important it was replaced for the sake of local children.

“For a town this size, there’s nothing for kids here,” she said.

“Why don’t we have anything for the young people to use?

“You look at places like Newport – they have a massive skate park which they fundraised to install. That’s what I’m looking for here.

“Let’s try to build something that, as a town, we can be proud of.

“It’ll be something we can look at and say ‘we did that for our kids’.”

Iona is hoping that attendees to the meeting will be able to form a group that can look at securing funding for the renovation of the park.

She says she was inspired to secure a replacement after her two teenage boys, both of whom regularly used the park, discovered it had been removed.

Iona said: “They were quite distressed when they went down to the park and, with no warning, found there were no ramps.

“I just thought ‘that’s not right’. If you give the kids something they want, they will take pride in it.”

Iona hopes that the group will be able to take advantage of renovation plans that were drawn up in 2012.

She said: “I’ve been given a copy of the plans. At a meeting with some other parents we said we would like to make some changes and the council said they would look into it.”

Iona explained that often a requirement for securing major funding was the creation of a constituted group, which is what she hopes will be created at the meeting.

Alan Bisset, parks development officer, commented on the removal of the skate ramps.

He said: “We’re hoping to establish a park group to look at ways to replace the skate park.

“If anyone would like to get involved they can contact me on 03451 55 55 55 + Ext 450489 or email me at [email protected].”