FRESH uncertainty last night surrounded the Government's plans for

council reform in Scotland after further concessions were announced. The

Government is to look again at its proposals as they affect

Central Scotland and Cumbernauld and Kilsyth.

Scottish Office Minister Allan Stewart told MPs debating the local

government reform Bill that, as far as Central was concerned, he would

discuss the matter with the Secretary of State and he was prepared to

meet MPs representing constituencies in Central region before the

Government reached a conclusion.

He gave no guarantees that the Government would change its original

plans for the area, but Labour's Henry McLeish said that the debate had

''moved forward'' and the Opposition withdrew a series of amendments on

the issue.

The controversy on Cumbernauld and Kilsyth basically surrounds the

Government's intention to place it in a new North Lanarkshire authority

along with Motherwell and Monklands.

Mr Stewart's announcement that he would look again at the matter also

led the Opposition to withdraw amendments, but the Minister made clear

that he is more prepared to stick to his guns on the North Lanarkshire

proposals than on Central.

Under the Government's proposals, Central would have broken up into

two separate authorities, a Stirling council which simply would have

comprised the present Stirling District Council, and an authority

combining Clackmannan and Falkirk.

The latter also would have taken in the town of Kincardine-on-Forth,

which is currently in Fife.

This move brought an angry reaction from Mr McLeish, the MP for Fife

Central, who said it was absurd, crazy and ridiculous to seek to break

Kincardine's historic ties with Fife.

Mr Stewart said there now were basically four options. In addition to

the Government's plan, there were proposals to leave Central region as a

single authority, to have Stirling, Falkirk and Clackmannan as three

separate authorities, and to link Clackmannan with Stirling instead of

Falkirk.

He said: ''It was in the context of trying to reconcile various

diametrically opposed views that we concluded there should be two

separate authorities for Central.

''Clackmannan and Falkirk were both relatively compact and heavily

industrialised, contrasting sharply with Stirling, which is more of a

service centre with a large rural hinterland.''

On the decision to move Kincardine-on-Forth out of Fife, Mr Stewart

said: ''We took the view that there were strong practical reasons for

its inclusion in the new Clackmannan and Falkirk authority.''

Nevertheless, he agreed to have a rethink on the grounds that there

was ''conflicting evidence and conflicting arguments'' about Central's

future.

Later, an attempt to establish a single authority for Clydesdale

failed after the relevant amendment was withdrawn by its sponsor, Ayr

Tory MP Phil Gallie.

Shadow Scottish Secretary George Robertson said last night: ''The

people of Scotland must be getting hugely confused signals over what the

Government is doing. Boundaries seem to move and shift with every whim

that comes into the Minister's mind.''

MPs last night rejected moves to create a

single-tier Dunfermline council outwith the rest of Fife but the

Government accepted a proposal for Inverclyde to be an authority in its

own right.