HOMEOWNERS in a riverside development in Glasgow are facing a £1 million bill after cracks developed in the quay wall.

City council engineers found there was a problem with the section of quay wall on the south side of the Clyde between the Kingston and Tradeston Bridges last year. Recent checks showed the problem is worse and a decision was made to shut part of the riverside walkway.

The quay wall is owned by the 278 owners of the properties in the Waterfront development. It is estimated the bill for repairing the damage is likely to be in excess of £1 million.

The Waterfront properties are factored by Speirs Gumley, who have called in specialist engineers to assess the scale of the problem.

Lorraine MacDonald of Speirs Gumley said: "We are working with the Waterfront owners' association and the city council to decide how to deal with this."

The city council is responsible for the riverside walkway, but not the quay wall on which it is built.

A council spokesman said that although the quay wall is privately owned, a public walkway will remain closed until the property manager advises the council the wall has been repaired.

George Parsonage, of the Glasgow Humane Society, who patrols the river regularly in his rescue boat, said: "I hope the problem is not too bad but something will have to be done.

"The people who own the houses own the quay wall, and if anything goes wrong with it they are responsible.

"In my opinion, if the quay wall is open to the public it should be maintained by public money."

In March last year, a 50-yard stretch of walkway collapsed into the river on the north side of the Clyde, just west of the Kingston Bridge at Anderston Quay.

The new problem came to light when council experts checked the condition of other sections of the river's quay walls, many of which date back to the 1800s.

If the quay wall collapsed, the bill to repair it could run in to millions of pounds.