Station Hotel Trust solution

I only recently resumed the chair person of the Ayr Station Hotel Community Action Group.

The cheapest, greenest, conservation -friendly solutions to the Station Hotel/ Station saga appear in the SAVE Report and retain the elegant townscape we love.

It appears in the savethestationhotel website.

The best and quickest outcome would start with Network Rail (NR) taking responsibility for the 16 per cent of the buildings which it owns and conserving and upgrading them with passenger amenities, including disability provision etc.

NR is funded to do repairs and build new stations from UK budgets.

The excellent recent SAVE Report costs this at £10m.

This upgrade would allow NR to stop using portacabins for staff which have cost about as much as repairs would have done.

At least NR staff are already accommodated for the restoration.

The SAVE Report included work by Edinburgh architects’and surveyors’ firms done pro bono and it costed a number of possibilities for the Hotel owned by Mr Ung, which is about 84 per cent of the total.

They costed this at between £12m and £18m depending on use. They also indicated means of funding the work via grants.

I am no expert but I believe that the council can legally compulsorily purchase if it has the money to fix something and a plan.

They can also have a back to back agreement to purchase and pass on to a Conservation Trust.

Later the Trust could sell on or lease out. This was proposed for the Hotel four years ago with Scottish Historic Trust which has resurrected 40-odd large Scottish properties, all thriving.

It is an option suggested in the SAVE Report that a Trust take it on.

We need to have a public debate and consultation and this could start with a public meeting on August 31 at 7 for 7.30pm in Ayr Town Hall.

Esther Clark, Ronaldshaw Park, Ayr