PLAY park users are urinating in a Borders community garden which was destroyed by vandals earlier this month, a meeting has heard.

A number of incidents have been reported at the Peebles CAN garden, which is situated next to Victoria Park.

Equipment has been broken, volunteers have been verbally abused and residents say fruit has been lobbed at neighbouring properties and motorists.

This has led to calls by the town’s community council for increased security at the site.

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Chairman Les Turnbull said: “There’s been an awful lot going on in the community garden as well as youngsters throwing stuff at vehicles on Kingsmeadows Road.

“We’ve also had an email sent into us by quite a concerned resident along there, who’s talking about the new play park, not that there’s a problem with the play park per se, but apparently a lot of people are using the gardens and the trees as a public toilet, and not using the Kingsmeadows car park toilet as we hoped that they would.

“This is really a question directed at our councillors because the Kingsmeadows Centre and the community garden is, in fact, council property. Is there anything that SBC could do to try and improve the level of security around there, whether it be lighting or CCTV, and is there anything we could do to tackle the open problems of the toilets in the gardens?”

Councillor Robin Tatler (independent) replied: “I don’t think we are responsible for the way in which people behave, to be quite honest. We could certainly remind people by putting up some signage that there are toilet facilities at Kingsmeadows Car Park.

“In terms of the security side of things, the garden is leased to Peebles CAN, so it would be their responsibility to look at how they secure that.

“It doesn’t really matter what kind of level of security that you put up; if people want to try and get in and do that, they will.

“It’s about changing the way people behave.”

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But Mr Turnbull says that the efforts by Peebles CAN to engage youngsters in their project is having a “mixed effect”.

Concerns were raised by council leader Shona Haslam (Conservative), who said pointing the finger at young people will only cause division.

The member for Tweeddale East said: “This is a tiny minority of young people that are involved in this.

"I would hate to give the impression, and I know that the community council doesn’t want to do this, that all young people are being tarred with the same brush."

She added: “I’d like to make it very clear that the vast majority of young people in our town are lovely people and just hanging out with their mates.

"So we shouldn’t walk around the town looking suspiciously at our young people because that just causes division.”

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Responding to this, Mr Turnbull said in no way is the community council suggesting all young people are “wrong’uns”.

Meanwhile, councillor Tatler agreed to ask the council for signage to be erected at Victoria Play Park, directing people to the local public toilets.

He also volunteered to speak to Peebles CAN about improving security.