South Ayrshire Council opted to spend £1.5m of ‘Covid recovery’ funding on proms, watersports and beach volleyball facilities, it can be revealed.

In the last two years, officials at County Buildings have received £15m in pandemic support cash.

During the first year of the pandemic, SAC underspent its Covid-19 recovery funding by £9.5m. It then received a further £5.5m from the Scottish Government in March 2021.

Last Summer the administration agreed to use £6.7m to plug the shortfall in council income up to the end of the current financial year.

A further £5.8m was then allocated to activities which were to be “clearly aimed at recovery from the impact of Covid-19” both this year and 2022/23.

The remaining £2.89m was kept as a contingency.

South Ayrshire Council said it had received 70 bids from its various services for projects which would assist the recovery from the pandemic. These would have cost more than £17m to put in place.

Only seven of the 32 projects given the nod by councillors explicitly state the funding is required because of particular impact by the pandemic.

Over the two years, the council committed to spend £750,000 on a ‘Promenade and Shorefront Improvement Scheme’ along the coast.

SAC said: “The project aims to improves the built asset along the promenades with reconstruction/surfacing, cycle paths, benches, lighting, signage and interpretation linked to each town with the promenade.

“This project focuses on residents and visitors alike to improve the appeal of our built assets regarding shorefronts and promenades making South Ayrshire a destination venue for people from across the UK whilst growing the local economy.”

Despite being set for closure, the council also approved £25k to ‘transform the vacant café area in the Citadel into a space that provides opportunities to increase footfall, generate income and provide targeted health and wellbeing activities for our most vulnerable residents.’

A further £120k was allocated to a “proposal to develop watersport and beach volleyball opportunities to link both sides of River Ayr to Craigie campus development”.