Blunder sees beach stripped of top title a day after award made

Kinghorn: One day Harbour beach was a winner next day it wasn’t

Kinghorn had sand kicked in its face after tourism bosses gave them a best beach award – and then withdrew it the next day.

Keep Scotland Beautiful delighted residents of the picturesque Fife town on Tuesday with the award for their clean and sustainable beach.

But things turned ugly the following day when the body was forced to pull the award because they had been “incorrectly advised”.

Rubbing salt water into the wound, they confirmed that the bathing water classification at the town’s Harbour beach for 2017 is actually “poor”.

Keep Scotland Beautiful apologised for the blunder and said they hoped to be able to make the award for real one day.

Gordon Langlands, Labour councillor for the area, said: “Not many people knew we’d won the award before it was taken away luckily.

“I got an email saying we’d won and then another not long after saying it had been taken away.

“We are going to work together to try and fix the problems preventing the beach winning the award so we can get it next time around.”

The Beach Awards are considered the benchmark for quality beaches across Scotland and are given to beaches that are well managed and used by people from around the country.

A spokesman for Keep Scotland Beautiful said: “We regret that the Harbour was incorrectly advised of its award status.

“We appreciate that the community will be bitterly disappointed – however, we are working with local stakeholders to ensure we can welcome the beach back as an award winner in the future.”

Alan McIlravie, Provost of Kinghorn, said: “The beach is about 500 metres long and they have fixed points for the tests and keep them at the same points to be tested each year.

“Over the three years we have had the same five sites tested and the same one site has been falling below standard. The rest of the beach is pristine.

“It’s to do with the outflow culvert pipe, when that flows out, it carries a very low pollutant.

“It could be anything from a pigeon nest to a dead seagull but there appears to be something like that in the culvert.

“The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) and Scottish Water are confident about finding the source of the problem, they’ve both been first class.

“In regards to the award, it’s just been a clerical error. Pettycur beach and the Kinghorn Harbour beach are often getting confused so I don’t know if that came into it.”

I got an email saying we’d won and then another not long after saying it had been taken away. GORDON LANGLANDS

Kinghorn’s Harbour beach, which was incorrectly recognised as a clean and sustainable beach by Keep Scotland Beautiful.