Your letters to the Helensburgh Advertiser: September 20, 2018

To have your say on any local issue, email editorial@helensburghadvertiser.co.uk.

Please supply your name and address with your letter, and also a daytime phone number in case we need to contact you at short notice to check any details – though this will not be printed.

Happy writing!

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Ever since the public consultations between March and May on the Helensburgh Waterfront Development we have witnessed an energetic flow of debate on strengths (“at last, this is long overdue, we need this now!”) and weaknesses (“it’s dull, it’s in the wrong place and doesn’t meet our needs”).

As with Brexit, everyone appears to hold a firm view with no middle ground being developed and, like Brexit, the planning process continues to roll forward towards implementation.

Before it’s much too late, and without being drawn into detail, it is instructive to search out the council’s original project aims and objectives for the development – which you can find at argyll-bute.gov.uk/helensburgh-waterfront – and then evaluate these against what has been achieved in the current proposal now presented for planning approval.

The first stated objective is “to deliver a new leisure facility and swimming pool which meets the needs of the Helensburgh and Lomond community”.

The majority of feedback received from the consultation events shows this not to be the case. The present proposal appears to be ill-equipped for those future users who have submitted commentary.

Objective two: “To encourage new businesses to open up in the town and to provide existing businesses with more opportunities.”

This is a key objective for the development: a successful, contemporary building with attractive leisure facilities would certainly increase footfall all along the waterfront and into the town.

However, new retail development within this site has a ‘difficult history’, and is opposed by the Chamber of Commerce and the public at large who wish this area to be retained for leisure and recreation.

Objective three: “To add to what has been achieved through other projects such as CHORD and Hermitage Park, which have created an attractive, vibrant and contemporary Town Centre that helps attract residents, businesses and visitors to the area.”

This current part-proposal neither draws from the experiences of CHORD, nor emulates the participatory development process currently innovating Hermitage Park.

By resurrecting an outmoded leisure format, the proposal fails to recognise contemporary “best practice” family-friendly models adopted by neighbouring competition. Is this ‘attractive’, ’contemporary’ or ‘vibrant’?

Objective four: “To create a safe, comfortable and accessible public space to provide a visible link to and from Colquhoun Square, which is the main outdoor event space and the town centre.”

The key linking element of landscaping that relates the new building to the town is simply not included in the current proposal – even as a future outline for a Stage 2. This is a major omission.

And the fifth and last objective: “To show the town of Helensburgh at its best and encourage additional private sector investment in the waterfront area and town centre.”

Failure to include approximately 30 per cent of the site area as an integrated component of the waterfront development must steeply diminish any civic dividend that might be achieved from this key site in Helensburgh. This is a second major omission; no one ever wished this site to be developed piecemeal.

We do need new leisure facilities and a vision for economic stability and growth. This proposal for both of these will have a 40-year lifespan but clearly fails to meet Argyll and Bute’s own aspirational and economic aims and objectives.

Some say that we should “get on with it” and it’s a “good enough” replacement of the existing arrangements.

I say this piecemeal development should be withdrawn from seeking planning permission and should only proceed when it meets the council’s own objectives and the needs of the future users. “Good enough” is not good enough.

Norman McNally, Helensburgh

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I see that Cllr Alastair Redman had a letter in last week’s Advertiser in which he criticises the SNP (Advertiser Comment, September 13) for trying to merge the British Transport Police (BTP) into mainstream policing.

I do not know the details of this particular action, but it is clear that BTP are fighting tooth and nail to avoid exposure to the wider world of real policing – with some success.

Let me ask Cllr Redman that he tell us on his position on Brexit. This is something that is of great importance to us all but where there is very little clarity.

Does he support the position of the Prime Minister in arguing for a semi-detached Brexit? Or does he support Boris and his pals who want nothing to do with that approach? Or has he another version that he thinks is better?

Only in the last few days has his party’s leader in Holyrood, Ruth Davidson, finally come down on the side of the Prime Minister.

Regardless of the outcome of discussions ongoing and yet to come, there are increasing numbers in Scotland that are fed up with the shenanigans they see in the House of Commons, and who are coming round to the idea that we might do better in another way.

Let us now hear something of substance from Cllr Redman, rather than the usual nit-picking.

Dougie Blackwood, Helensburgh

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I write in response to the observation made by John Ashworth (Advertiser Comment, September 6) that “when the likes of Marks and Spencer want to develop in the town, we have a site for them”.

When will Argyll and Bute Council officials, and possibly councillors too, get it through their thick skulls that the people who care enough about the town to take the time to make their views heard do not want a supermarket, or any other form of retail, on the pier site?

This view has been the subject of debate, review and public inquiry for many years, so it can’t be claimed that the strength of feeling isn’t known.

And the comments made by LiveArgyll’s chair Andrew Nisbet last week about the flaws in the community council’s survey/consultation are risible.

A margin of 53 per cent to 47 per cent is a perfectly healthy one for coming to a conclusion on public opinion about any proposition. See Brexit.

And if Mr Nisbet cares to suggest voting in national, local and any other form of democratic decision making is made compulsory, to make sure the outcome is truly representative, let’s see how far he gets with that idea.

All votes, ballots or consultations are self-selecting unless you drag people to the ballot box.

Phil Dye, via email

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I am writing in support of the plans for the new swimming pool.

I am elderly and not too fit but I use the facilities offered presently at the swimming pool and at the Victoria Halls on a regular basis along with a number of people trying to rehabilitate after heart attacks and various conditions.

The new pool is for all strata of the population, not just the fitness fiends and the very young.

I am getting very frustrated by the bickering on all sides. If you use the present pool it is obvious we will soon be swimming in the Clyde as it is sinking fast into its founds.

Time is running out. The money allocated could be withdrawn and put to a different, perhaps less contentious, use.

Please could those who support the plans for the new pool make their agreement to the plans be known and let us all move forward.

After all, we all voted for both the community councillors and Argyll and Bute councillors, and we should be supportive instead of all this in-fighting.

Just remember the facilities are for us all.

Margaret Horrell, via email

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Councillor David Kinniburgh wrote an interesting article in the Advertiser of September 6 on how the planning system in Argyll and Bute Council works – interesting probably more in what it didn’t say than in what it did say.

Firstly, he points out that the planning, protective services and licensing committee has 15 members drawn from throughout Argyll and Bute Council.

What this means is that important and controversial planning decisions in the Helensburgh area are taken by people from as far afield as Campbeltown, Islay (two), Tobermory and Bute. Are the people of Helensburgh really aware of this – and if so, are they happy about it?

Likewise, five councillors from the Helensburgh area are taking the important and controversial planning decisions for the people of Campbeltown, Islay, Tobermory and Bute. Is this correct?

Secondly, Scottish Government policy is that major decisions affecting local people should be taken by local people. Councillor Kinniburgh makes no attempt in his article to explain how Argyll and Bute’s procedures match Scottish Government policy.

I for one feel somewhat disenfranchised.

Stewart Noble, Abercromby Street East, Helensburgh