South Ayrshire Council News

Residents of Fort Seafield and Wallacetown Community Council, Councillors Little and Grant, footballers and Ayr United coach.

Fort, Seafield and Wallacetown Community Council has supported a South Ayrshire Community Safety Partnership initiative to reduce youth disorder in Rozelle and surrounding areas.

Following a successful bid to the South Ayrshire Council Civic Trust Fund, the Community Council used part of the funding to support sports for young people. They chose to fund football and golf diversionary activities as they were delighted with the efforts of the Council's Antisocial Behaviour Team and Strathclyde Police to reduce youth disorder in their area.

Football activities were run over a five week period with teams from Forehill, Wallacetown, Belmont Boys Club and Maybole taking part. Football coaches from Ayr United organised the fixtures and refereed the games.

At the end of the five weeks a presentation ceremony took place at the Old Racecourse with the Belmont team being declared the winners and Wallacetown the runners up.

Councillors Elaine Little and Bill Grant presented the trophies to the teams along with the 'Golden Boot' award to the player of the tournament, a talented young boy from the Wallacetown team, Tom Slider.

After presenting the trophies Councillor Elaine Little said: "I would like to congratulate the winning team and the runners up, they displayed great football skills and were a credit to their teams. All the teams who took part should be very proud of what they have achieved. “Importantly I would like to thank Fort Seafield and Wallacetown Community Council for funding this worthwhile diversionary activity."

Councillor Bill Grant commented: "As a result of this initiative reported youth crime in Rozelle and surrounding areas was down by 54% in June this year compared to the figures for June last year. The diversionary activities have given young people a healthy and interesting activity to take part in and this has improved the quality of life for people living in the local community."