Letter: Is there a plan to fill Inchgreen in for housing?

They have anchorages near residential areas and continually fail to engage with communities.

In 2021, Peel Ports leased the UK’s largest dry dock, Inchgreen, to Atlas Decommissioning, and promised the creation of 100 jobs that have failed to materialise. If it went ahead, it would have turned this strategic asset into a scrapyard.

The dry dock has lain empty for 20 years with many broken promises to maintain and return it to a fully operational marine facility.

There is currently a petition to the Scottish Parliament Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee (PE2029 – Nationalise Clydeport) to bring the ports and harbours on the river Clyde into public ownership.

I was recently delighted to move a motion at the Alba Party national conference that reaffirms Alba’s commitment to: i) the aims and objectives of the Campaign to save Inchgreen Drydock; ii) nationalise Clydeport and revoke the status of Peel Ports Group (Clydeport) as Harbour Authority for the River Clyde; iii) create a publicly owned authority to manage the River Clyde; iv) the compulsory purchase of Inchgreen Drydock and creation of a community trust to manage it.

To explain the rationale behind this, I’m going to give you a quick history lesson on what is termed 'Common Good'.

Common Good property can be seen as the original form of urban community ownership. Granted to, and acquired by, former Burghs over time, Common Good land was intended to provide the burgh with space to construct civic buildings and hold markets, as well as areas for recreation, the grazing of livestock, collection of fuelwood, and other activities.

So important were these Common Good lands that maladministration in the late medieval period led to the Common Good Act 1491, which provides legal status to Common Good and an obligation that it is managed for the benefit of the citizens of the burgh – and is still in force today.

Despite this early legislation, over the intervening centuries many of these assets have been sold, appropriated, or simply lost from records.

The original Burgh Councils that had close connections to these assets and managed them on a day-to-day basis are also gone, and the status of ‘Burgh’ has been abolished. Various local government reforms through the 20th century further weakened the connection between assets and local management.

In 2003, in a Court of Session appeal case Lord Drummond Young cited that, common good property was the ordinary property of a burgh, held for the general purposes of the community.

It is owned by the community, and the town council or other local authority is regarded in law as simply the manager of the property, as representing the community.

Typically, the common good included public buildings such as churches and the municipal chambers, the streets of the burgh, public open spaces and markets.

It might also include lands, houses and other forms of property. In a coastal burgh, the harbour would typically form part of the common good. (Lord Drummond Young in Andrew Wilson and Others v Inverclyde Council 2003).

So where did it all go wrong? The Clyde Port Authority Order 1965 created the Clyde Port Authority. Clyde Port began in 1966 with the merger of the Clyde Navigation Trust, the Greenock Harbour Trust and the Clyde Lighthouses Trust to form the Clyde Port Authority.

This authority was privatised in 1992, was subject to a management buyout soon after and acquired by Peel Ports in 2003.

Thereby land and assets that should be for the benefit of the community, are now in the hands of a private concern.

Peel have received millions and millions of pounds of public money by way of grants, yet not one penny has the public purse received as a return. They receive substantial sums from cruise ships and passengers, again, we do not receive any financial return from these.

With regard to the dry dock, are Peel content to see it lie derelict and rot, as a vibrant drydock would be direct competition for their southern based concerns? They tried to lease it as a scrapyard. Refused to lease it to interested parties.

Scotland has a nationalised shipyard in Ferguson Marine, that is at capacity with the two much maligned ferries.

Problems that are not of the workforce doing but lie squarely with CMAL, a quango that needs disbanded.

The Scottish Government should bring Inchgreen into public ownership and align it with Ferguson's, thus allowing it the capacity to bid for other work. It should also directly award all further ferry contracts to Ferguson's.

I’d like to pay tribute to the Campaign to Save Inchgreen Dry Dock group, led by Robert Buirds, who’ve worked tirelessly to fight for a better future, for highly skilled jobs, in the face of a distinct lack of support from Inverclyde Council, its councillors, MSP and MP.

Indeed the aforementioned have at times been hostile to the group. It is remarkable and at the same time scandalous that this strategic national asset didn’t merit inclusion in the Economic Task Force’s proposals.

Could it be because of the Joint Venture company set up between the council and Peel had a veto on its use? It is time our elected councillors, MSP, MP and council officers explained to the Inverclyde public why they continue to endorse Peel, why they continue to subsidise them with public money and why they sit and do nothing while Inchgreen Drydock deteriorates.

Is there a master plan to fill it in for more housing?

Jim McEleny

Alba Party