I am afraid your regular correspondent Robert Buirds was disingenuous in his letter of 6 December ('Petition for debate').

Contrary to what he implied; I do not have the power to stop his group’s petition being debated by the Council. What I advised him was that the Labour Administration had no intention of requesting that their petition be debated at the full Council meeting. It was still open to any of the other 13 members of the Council to make this request. The fact that none of them did must surely tell Mr Buirds something about the way he is leading his campaign.

As for the allegation that the business case for the Inchgreen City Deal project, which is jointly funded by the UK and Scottish Governments and overseen by the Glasgow City Region Cabinet, has collapsed, this is simply untrue. There are regular public updates to the City Region Cabinet on this project. The latest can be found on the Glasgow City Council website in the papers for the City Region Cabinet meeting of November 7. For ease of access the update can be found at item 10, section 16.8.

The initial works to create the new Inchgreen Marine Park are ongoing and are due to be completed by late February 2024. There is considerable interest from companies in this business park and in utilising the adjacent marine assets, which I am not at liberty to share publicly due to commercial confidentiality. I am sure Mr Buirds will be pleased to hear this.

I am also sure he will be pleased to know that I recently met with Paul Sweeney MSP, who now better understands what the Council is doing in partnership with Peel Ports to realise the potential of Inchgreen.

Councillor Stephen McCabe

Leader of Inverclyde Council