A PASSIONATE plea for vital funding to enable a new bridge and a much-needed recreational park to be created in a booming Borders village led to a U-turn last week.

The population of Clovenfords has doubled over the last 20 years.

But there is a lack of recreational space to meet the needs of the ever-growing community.

Clovenfords Community Council has ambitious plans to replace a dilapidated village bridge and recreate a new park.

However, none of that is possible until a flood risk assessment of the area is carried out.

When members of Tweeddale Area Partnership met on Tuesday, February 6, members were recommended by a panel to refuse funding for a grant of £3,600 to finance that assessment.

The panel decided not to recommend funding because it was “unclear what degree of commitment had been obtained from funding bodies to enable the bridge itself to be constructed in due course”.

It was a recommendation which was overturned – and funding approved – after Partnership members heard from Chris Whitmore, chair of Clovenfords Community Council.

He said: “We can’t approach anybody for funding at the moment because we don’t know how much the bridge is going to cost.

“We’re guessing at the moment it will be around £100,000. It’s a Catch 22. We can’t move forward without the flood risk assessment.

“Without the bridge the much bigger development, which is the development of the park, can not go-ahead – no bridge means no park.

“Clovenfords really needs a recreational area.

“What we’re trying to do is bring back the 1953 King George V field.

“We hae already planted an orchard, 40 trees.

“It’s not just the bridge it is this whole recreational area that Clovenfords needs and the community wants.

“In the last 20 years Clovenfords population has probably doubled and there are a lot of young families and so there is a whole rationale to develop that playing field in the way we are doing.

“It would be a wonderful community asset that Clovenfords really needs.”