“People have had their lives disrupted, and they want answers and action.” That line from Ross Martin, project manager at the Mining Remediation Authority, gets to the point in Kincardine. Nearly a year after mine subsidence was discovered beneath Dewar Avenue, the agency says the work to make the ground safe is now nearing completion. For residents, that marks a grim milestone rather than a clean ending. Six homes have already been demolished and the local community centre remains shut, leaving a west Fife neighbourhood to live with the fallout from ground problems buried deep below it.

The response moved into a new phase in May 2026, when a four-month remediation programme began on the street. According to the Mining Remediation Authority, engineers have been injecting grout and gravel into the old mine workings beneath the site, with the aim of filling voids and reducing the risk of any further movement. It is technical work, but the effect on the ground above is plain enough. This is about stopping the street from shifting again and giving people some confidence that the damage seen over the past year will not spread.

Monitoring had picked up slow, ongoing movement inside the fenced-off area where the demolished properties once stood. That detail matters, because it explains why the site has remained so tightly managed even after the most visible emergency phase passed. The more reassuring message from the authority is that no movement has been detected beyond that zone, outside normal seasonal variation. In other words, the problem appears to have stayed within the area already identified, rather than creeping further into the surrounding part of Kincardine.

Martin said working in a tight-knit community carries a heavy responsibility, and the tone of the official update reflects that. The authority says incidents of this kind cannot be rushed: the underground picture has to be properly understood before any safe intervention can begin. That may sound procedural, but residents have spent months waiting while specialists worked out what was happening below their homes. The Mining Remediation Authority is now saying it is proud of how its team investigated carefully, kept lines of communication open and tried to do right by the people affected.

Even with the main remediation works nearing their end, Kincardine is not yet at the point of closure. Monitoring of Dewar Avenue, the community centre and the surrounding area will continue until at least spring 2027, both to reassure residents and to help shape decisions on the site’s long-term future. That is the part public bodies sometimes gloss over: finishing the engineering is not the same as restoring a place. Streets recover at a slower pace than project timetables, and communities are left asking what comes next for the land, the buildings and the people displaced.

There is a wider lesson here for former coalfield communities well beyond Fife. Old workings do not stay in the past just because the pits are long gone; now and again, they still reappear in the most disruptive way possible, on ordinary residential streets where families expect to feel secure. For Kincardine, the latest update offers some hard-won reassurance, but not a full stop. The authority says it will keep the community updated as work continues, and it is still urging the public to report suspected coal mining hazards at any time if new concerns emerge.