A MAN has been caught making false allegations to police over the welfare of a Kilcreggan neighbour’s children.

Donald Macleod contacted police with the fake claims while he was living in the village in the summer of 2022.

Police in Helensburgh visited Kilcreggan to investigate the concerns Macleod had raised with them, but officers later discovered they were untrue.

Macleod appeared at Dumbarton Sheriff Court for sentencing on Tuesday, April 23, having pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to a charge of wasting police time by making claims he knew to be false, which thereby deprived the public of officers’ services.

At the time of the offence, on August 4, 2022, Macleod was the subject of a bail order which had been granted at the same court two months earlier.

Macleod, now of Dalmuir Court, Clydebank, had also breached a non-harassment order by shouting and swearing at a man in Churchill Square, Helensburgh, exactly two months before the incident in Kilcreggan.

He had been put on a ‘structured deferred sentence’ in January after admitting wasting officers’ time.

Sheriff Maxwell Hendry admonished and dismissed Macleod on the breach charge, because he had stayed out of trouble since confessing to flouting the order.

On the charge of making a false report to police, Macleod was fined £200, plus a £10 payment to the Scottish Government’s victim surcharge fund.

Macleod has previous convictions for shouting and swearing at a man in Graham Street, Helensburgh, and threatening him with violence, and for behaving in an aggressive and threatening manner towards two women in the town.

Those offences dated back to December 2020 and April 2021 respectively.

But the court heard that Macleod appeared to have turned things around since his spate of offending.

Sheriff Hendry told him: "I remember your first appearance before me a number of years ago. Things seem to have changed for the better.

"It's time to bring your court appearances, hopefully, to an end."