Fife should welcome campervan visitors

Sir, – Every year a huge wealth migration in the form of European and southern Englander’s campervans takes place up to, and back from, Scotland.

These visitors are for the most part multilingual, cultured, responsible and wealthy people and are among our best customers, vital to our own survival as a Pottery Cooperative and to the likes of the Pittenweem Arts Festival and other venues.

In the rest of Europe, tourist towns and areas provide a mostly free campervan service for overnight stays; they are recognised as being an important tourist adjunct.

Crail Pottery was founded in 1965, and until 2015 campervans freely used the Marketgate for overnight stays; a summer average of five or so vans a night, with their average spend of £100 or so each, vital to the co-operative.

In the old days, jobs for young people were important. However, probably a majority of the area’s new demographic includes non-local retirees, working commuters and second homeowners who now, quite frankly, find tourism a nuisance.

Hence the community councils persuading Fife Council to erect signs originally forbidding any campervan parking in Marketgate during the day and at night, now modified to forbidding overnight stays.

So the campervans moved to the likes of Kingsbarns beach, where I go often, and know they cause very little trouble and present little danger.

My family is probably one of the biggest employers in both Crail and Anstruther. Do jobs for our young people no longer count? Why is Fife Council so hostile to campervans, resulting in them travelling to routes like the North Coast 500?

Have they never thought how many millions would be brought into Kirkcaldy High Street, Leven High Street, Burntisland and so on, by providing free campervan service areas on the sea fronts? Especially for Kirkcaldy with its rail connection with Edinburgh.

The simple facilities campervans need is an area of land, a tap, litter bins and a wastewater disposable point.

I therefore urge Fife Council to erect notices welcoming campervans to Fife as they now do in the border towns, to remove the hostile signs in Crail and provide the facilities these pleasant people require.

I served on Crail Community Council for many years, in those days tourists were cherished and jobs for our young people were paramount.

As a walker and lover of Fife countryside I visit these local ‘problem sites’ frequently and never find a problem.

The season is very short. If we could get campervans to visit in the winter, it would benefit the community greatly and mean more jobs for our young people.

We must provide our campervan visitors with what they rightly expect from a civilised European country. Stephen Grieve. Crail,

Fife.