Beach cleaning is swept out to sea
Seafront home owners object to shore cuts
It is a beach of two halves.
One half of Ayr seafront is kept spotlessly clean while the other is being snubbed.
Beach cleaning between the Pier and Cromwell Road has been radically reduced because of a budget slash. Meanwhile the area between the road and Ayr India is still maintained to a very high standard.
Seafront flat owners submitted a petition to South Ayrshire Council in a bid to get their beach stretch cleansed again. But their 85 signature pleas were knocked back by the council’s leadership panel last week.
Councillor Martin Dowey said: “The beach between Cromwell Road to the Pier will be cleaned once in a blue moon.”
He said residents wanted the sand to be cleaned mechanically with a tractor.
Last week’s Fort Seafield and Wallacetown Community Council meeting heard there was plenty of rubbish in that particular section of the beach.
Peter McCa l l t o l d t h e meeting: “You can fill bag after bag of litter from there.” Lorna and Alan Roseweir and Iain McKie from the Citadel Quay Owners’s Association submitted the petition asking for a more regular tidy- up.
The residents said the beach in its entirety should be recognised as the jewel in the crown for Ayr. They also questioned why there was no public consultation about the changing of the cleaning routine.
The cleaning regime was stalled at the the north section in 2015. The council said it would cost £ 25,000 to resume the clean- up.
The council say mechanical cleaning is kept to a minimum to “protect the biodiversity of fauna and flora.”
In 2017 the council cut the number of staff combing the beaches from 14 to nine.
Currently one tractor driver covers Ayr, Prestwick and Troon.