Campaigners Go Ape

Glasgow Council ignore local views and vote for Pollok Park development

AFTER a frenetic campaign of opposition, Glasgow City councillors this week voted to approve a planning application to site a privately-owned tree top assault course in Pollok Park.
The Planning Applications Committee, by 14 votes to six, gave the go ahead to Go Ape following a hearing and a visit to the site in North Wood, the last undeveloped part of Glasgow’s biggest park.
Since December, Save Pollok Park have run an intense campaign against the proposal, gathering more than 4000 signatures on their petition and playing a significant role in encouraging the 880 objections submitted to the committee.
In just three months they’ve generated acres of news coverage, held a public meeting attended by something like 1000 people, and brought together objectors as diverse as the Maxwell family - the landowners who donated Pollok Park to the city - and sports pundit Chick Young, dubbed Eco Chico by the Only and Excuse team after his unexpectedly passionate involvement in a cause unrelated to Glasgow Rangers.
It’s been an outstandingly professional campaign from a bunch of local residents, community councillors and park users, one which has left Go Ape, who view themselves as an altogether groovier face of capitalism, winded.
“Go Ape is a good news story,” insisted director Tristram Mayhew, who likes to be referred to as the company’s ‘Chief Gorilla’, to a Burgh Hall full of angry locals.
They failed to see the cuddly side. To be fair, Mayhew had every right to be surprised. It wasn’t Go Ape who had dreamt up the plan, but Glasgow City Council themselves. They invited Go Ape to make an application, following a consultation which found that people wanted more stuff in parks.
Save Pollok Park undoubtedly won the PR battle. They dug up the architects of the world-renowned Burrell Collection, who slated the proposal, describing the uninterrupted woodland as an integral part of the building’s design.
They were relentless with Freedom of Information requests, establishing that the council had no record of any strategy for a successful consultation on the proposal, and had put up just one planning notice. On a lamppost. Outside the park. For an unknown number of days.
But the Carry On Councillors carried on regardless, dedicatedly dismissing apparent public opinion throughout. At the public meeting, Labour councillor Ruth Simpson lectured the assembled masses for not responding to the consultation (that they didn’t know about).
At the Planning Applications Committee, Colin Deans, SNP councillor for Newlands/Auldburn, the ward which covers Pollok Park, described the majority of objectors as “dog-walkers” who would “object to anything”.
He decried their failure to object for “homogeneous” reasons - perhaps what anyone else would applaud as finding lots of different reasons to object.
And reasons aplenty there were - noise, lack of toilets, lack of car parking, the wood’s abundant, protected bluebells, and the lack of any full environmental impact survey, to name a few.
But fundamental to it all was one question - what right does the council have to lease out a swathe of public space to use for private profit?
And substantial profit there will be - at £25 a pop, £20 for kids, a shot on a Go Ape course doesn’t come cheap. And that lays waste to claims that the course is somehow part of an anti-obesity strategy, unless you count getting fat bankers out of the office for a couple of hours to ‘bond’.
Go Ape’s offer of 400 free places a year for deprived Glasgow weans was raised at the committee meeting. But in a city that pays out grants for school clothes to more than 30,000 children, they’ll have to wait in a 75-year long queue.
The council will make some money out of the deal too. Rent for the site is set at £2,000 for the first year, rising to £10,000 a year plus a percentage of profits after four years - totalling around £120,000 a year if the course is used to capacity.
Its small potatoes, for the council and for Go Ape, but it’s this financial interest that means the planning application must now go to the Scottish Government for final approval.
The battle for Pollok Park’s trees is far from over.

Govanhill Baths looks set to re-open its doors

THE Glasgow City Council sharks who shut down Govanhill community baths in 2001 have become supporters of plans to reopen them, in an Easter miracle.
Local Labour representatives and MSP Frank McAveety have lined up to support the reopening of the baths which were shut in 2001 after a hard fought battle by local people.
A 141-day occupation that aimed to save the facility ended in bitter fury when hundreds of police were sent in to oust the campaigners.
But, says McAveety, there has been a “healing” process, and the time is now right to reopen the baths. At the time, estimates for the cost of refurbishing the pool, published by councillors, varied from £750,000 to £3.5million - although campaigners dismissed the figures as spurious, produced from thin air to justify closure.
Now that the time is right, the proposed renovation project is estimated at £8.447 million. Despite the violence with which their occupation was ended, the community in Govanhill have never abandoned their pool.
A community trust was set up to raise the funds to renovate and reopen, and has plugged away at the issue.
As funds began to build, the council offered the trust a 99- year lease on the baths. And now, with various funding sources identified, including Govanhill Housing Association who propose to build 16 flats for social rent as part of the development, it seems more likely than ever that the baths’ doors will once again be open to swimmers.
A project committee has been set up which includes members of the Community Trust and their architects, councillors, city council planning officials, the Community Planning Partnership, Glasgow Building Preservation Trust and Govanhill Housing Association.
The council has also dedicated an officer as ‘point of contact’ for the project, to coordinate the council’s contribution.
A bid is being put together for the Big Lottery Fund - who will insist on democratic community involvement in the project.
The Govanhill Baths campaigners’ slogan has remained “United we will swim”. And it looks very much like, some day soon, they will.